For all you #Oil Watchers remember this also impacts: Oil Traders Look
for a Bonanza Like 2009
The sudden collapse in oil prices has left the world awash in cheap crude. Analysts estimate that global production of excess oil—oil for which there is no immediate demand—is somewhere between 1 million and 2 million barrels a day. Oil traders are scrambling to find a place to store it all, leasing tankers at the fastest pace since the recession. With any luck, they’ll replicate a strategy that won them big profits in 2009, the last time oil was this inexpensive.
In 2008 oil prices crashed from $146 a barrel in July to $36 in December. Traders kept buying crude, but rather than sell, they sat on it and waited for prices to rebound. By the end of 2009, prices had almost doubled from their lows of a year earlier, and trading companies booked fat profits as they unloaded their stored oil. Gunvor, the world’s fifth-largest independent oil trader, made a record profit of $621 million that year, according to a company bond prospectus.
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