It’s a traffic jam that might make drivers smile. As CNN Money’s Matt Egan reports, the oversupply of oil that has caused prices to crash is causing oil-laden tankers to pile up off the US Gulf Coast: there’s no place left ashore to put all that crude.
ClipperData’s director of commodity research Matt Smith calls it a “super tanker traffic jam.” Smith, who has been tracking the data on crude oil shipments, first noted maritime congestion off the coast of Singapore a month ago.
Now the rising tide of “floating storage” of crude has hit the Gulf. The CNN Money story includes a graphic visualizing the Datamyne shipping data on the number of Aframax, Suezmax and VLCC tankers waiting to offload.
The good news – for drivers anyway – is the price of gasoline looks ready to slip below $2 by Christmas.
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