The world is so awash with crude, the boss of BP Plc said people will be filling their “ swimming pools ” with it by the end of the year. While the company’s Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley bemoaned this bearish outlook for oil, traders were eyeing a potentially profitable opportunity: turning supertankers into temporary floating storage facilities. Traders exploit a price structure called ‘super-contango’ to profit from storing oil at sea Trading houses including Vitol Group, Koch Supply & Trading LP and Glencore Plc, plus the in-house trading arms of BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, collectively made billions of dollars from 2008 to 2009 stockpiling crude at sea. At the peak of the floating storage spree, sheltered anchorages in the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Singapore Strait and off South Africa each hosted dozens of supertankers. Chris Bake, a senior executive at Vitol, the world’s largest […]