The world’s biggest independent oil storage company said that space for traders to store crude and refined fuels has all but run out as a result of the fast-expanding glut that Covid-19 has created. “The available capacity on the oil side is almost completely sold out for our terminals,” Gerard Paulides, the chief financial officer of Rotterdam-based Royal Vopak NV, said in an interview. “For Vopak, worldwide available capacity that is not in maintenance is almost all gone and from what I hear elsewhere in the world we’re not the only ones.”
The firm is racing to complete maintenance to free up whatever space it can. Worldwide oil demand has collapsed at an unprecedented speed because the coronavirus has caused a mass halt to global transportation systems and hurt economies. With producers failing to reduce output at the same pace, an oversupply of crude and fuels has quickly emerged. U.S. crude oil futures for May moved into negative territory on Monday — meaning traders were effectively willing to pay people to take barrels. A large part of that was because of concerns about space to store.
“It’s extremely tough to find something in this market,” said Krien van Beek, a storage broker at ODIN-RVB Tank Storage Solutions, discussing the global situation for fuels. Companies that have their own tanks may not have filled them, but there are now barely any left for third-party hire, she said.