A natural harbor to the northwest of Cape Town keeps a secret that oil tracking professionals are still trying to uncover. The secret is exactly how much oil is in storage at any given moment at the Saldanha Bay array of tanks that can hold up to 45 million barrels. The reason this remains largely a secret is that these tanks, unlike oil storage facilities elsewhere, are half underground, making it harder to collect enough satellite imaging data to venture an estimate. Oil traders, apparently, appreciate this rare privacy of stocks. The Saldanha Bay storage hub is among the largest in the world and came into existence during the apartheid years when the South African government sought to ensure adequate oil supplies for the country amid UN sanctions. Then the apartheid regime broke down and oil traders were quick to tap the storage capacity. Bloomberg’s Paul Burkhardt writes about […]