Making a killing in oil!

There is a profit to be made in every adversity – one just needs to have the vision and the foresight. That’s precisely what TI Oceania is all about. This 3 million barrel megaship was built to ferry vast quantities of oil across oceans. But in 2016, instead of ferrying across the oceans of the world, it will stay anchored off the coast of Singapore. Why? Instead of sailing, it will stay put and become a storage unit, storing millions of barrels of oil for Vitol SA.

This is a new trading strategy. Buy oil at the current rate, huge stocks of oil. And then sell futures contract, locking in higher oil prices for later. Traders have realized that this is one of the easiest ways to make money.  To cash in on this opportunity, major traders including Vitol SA, Gunvor SA, Trafigura Beheer BV and Koch Supply & Trading Co. Ltd have chartered supertankers capable of storing a combined total of more than 30 million barrels of oil.

And this option for unusual storage comes after onshore storage tanks ran out of space. As per a report put out by Citigroup, China’s coastline storage facility has run out of space as it has filled all that which was available with cheap oil. Even in USA, its storage hub at Okla has risen over 20% since December. And that’s precisely why ships are now becoming storage tanks. This is what trading is – making a killing when the chips are down.