The biggest winners in the current market situation are the owners of storage capacity—onshore and offshore. Storage has been the most sought-after ‘commodity’ in the energy market in the past month as demand was crashing, and supply was rising.
Offshore, traders are scrambling to book floating storage, and charter rates for supertankers are skyrocketing. Storage costs are surging, and so are costs for chartering tankers to store oil at sea for future sales when traders expect demand to recover from the pandemic-hit plunge.