Comment by ldoughty
5 years ago
If the oil tanker can hold 2,000,000 barrels at -$35/ barrel you are being paid $70 million to store the oil for a few months...
Of course, the next question is who pays for transport to/from the tanker, labor, dock fees, employees in ship (unless you can simply "park" it for a fee)
Yeah, I was wondering. I think if someone had the experience needed to put this together quickly it would likely be profitable.
It looks like most tankers are ~200,000 metric tons which at ~8 barrels per metric ton is roughly 1.6 million barrels. You also really only need to store it for a month, I think June futures are around $20 still, and so it's a diff of ~$60/barrel.
Better yet you can play hedging games with your oil. Sell a june delivery contract to lock in your profit now. If June prices collapse buy a contract to take delivery in June and sell one to deliver in July. You never have to get to Port until prices are high enough to be worth actually making a delivery, and you make money every month.
Details of the above are important to get just right. It works out if you get all the details right.
Ran some basic figures for 6 months:
Barrels 2000000
lease cost / day $350,000.00
Barrel cost -$37
Take delivery profit $74,000,000.00
After 180 days storage $63,000,000.00
Sell/barrel $20
Net $51,000,000.00