
Dozens of oil tankers cluster off the coast of Texas due to oil price fall - cryoshon
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-95/centery:29/zoom:10
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Gustomaximus
Can i just say thanks for sharing this map. I'm having a blast looking around
the world at various ports!

Edit: My favourite so far is a oil rig who's description photo is them on
fire: [http://imgur.com/9VpE78V](http://imgur.com/9VpE78V)

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danbruc
I don't think it is on fire, look more like they are just flaring stuff.

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smackfu
No, it was definitely a fire:
[http://www.naroomanewsonline.com.au/story/1345250/ship-
spott...](http://www.naroomanewsonline.com.au/story/1345250/ship-spotters-
sight-the-stena-clyde/)

~~~
leoedin
Definitely a fire, yes, but also definitely an intentional one. Look at the
images others have posted in the thread:
[http://imgur.com/FTFgz5U](http://imgur.com/FTFgz5U). It has a flare at
platform level sticking out one side.

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smackfu
My bad then. That caption on the article I linked is pretty misleading.

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hammock
Zero Hedge had a good piece on this yesterday and goes a bit into contango,
where future prices are higher than spot prices, essentially incentivizing
these tankers to just sit in the water.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-12/something-very-
stra...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-12/something-very-strange-
taking-place-coast-galveston)

~~~
nraynaud
what I don't get is that if there are future contracts, they have to be
fulfilled when the time comes, wasn't all this oil bought in advance with
future contracts? I guess actual users of the oil have actually ordered it
before as opposed to speculators, they need it now don't they?

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pjh68
Buy spot price, sell a future immediately. Works if the storage cost (i.e.
keeping the ship & crew out of port) is greater than the spread.

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padobson
One of my favorite board games is Container[1].

The game is great because the economy develops with each player taking on
different levels of responsibility in different roles: production, storage,
and shipment.

And it's not at all uncommon to watch players keep fully-loaded ships at sea
while they wait for the opportune time to sell the goods on board.

[1][http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/26990/container](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/26990/container)

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ralphael
thanks for this, didn't know it existed!

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cmaggard
It's amazing, but at the same time it's OOP with a reprint anytime soon being
unlikely. It would probably be very easy to rig up a print-and-play copy
however.

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ralphael
ebay here I come!

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pessimizer
Not likely to have success there, either, but here's a list of sellers.

[https://boardgamegeek.com/geekmarket/browse?objecttype=thing...](https://boardgamegeek.com/geekmarket/browse?objecttype=thing&objectid=26990)

 _Where can I find this for less than $150?_

[https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1338344/where-can-i-find-
le...](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1338344/where-can-i-find-less-150)

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ehosca
[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-12/something-very-
stra...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-12/something-very-strange-
taking-place-coast-galveston)

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jakozaur
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/business/oil-tanker-
traffi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/business/oil-tanker-traffic-jam-
off-texas-is-viewed-as-sign-of-oversupply.html?_r=0)

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ComputerGuru
And here I was expecting a news article or press statement! It was an
incredibly pleasant experience to see the facts from the headline firsthand,
no spin attached. Thank you, OP!

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Nicholas_C
What does the normal level of tankers idling outside of Galveston look like?

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washedup
This sort of phenomenon can be seen lots of times throughout the past decades.
Anytime oil falls below a certain price, it becomes cheaper to pay to keep the
ships running offshore under the assumption that oil prices will increase in
the near term.

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toomuchtodo
It's called "Contango".

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-31/how-oil-
mar...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-31/how-oil-markets-came-
to-embrace-contango)

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friddz
Here is another port where oil tankers often wait when oil prices are low:
[http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:57/centery:...](http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:57/centery:25/zoom:10)

I had the opportunity to go on board one of these ships in 2012 and here is a
picture I took during that visit:
[http://imgur.com/hmM60h4](http://imgur.com/hmM60h4)

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phreeza
So am I right thinking these ships are fully loaded?

If so, I guess the implicit assumption is that the price will rise back faster
than the costs of having an idle ship sitting in the water? If the market was
efficient, wouldn't it be irrational for the holders to assume this?

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barney54
The market is efficient, but only on the long run. People making decisions
like this make the market efficient by storing oil when it is cheap (or when
it appears to be cheap).

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s73v3r
I fail to see how deliberately not doing something with a resource makes
anything more efficient.

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jeffcoat
It's obvious that moving oil in space helps, right? You move the resource from
a place it's relatively plentiful to a different place where oil is relatively
scarce. Say, from the Persian Gulf to Australia.

The same thing is happening here:

These ships are trying to move oil from a _time_ when oil is relatively
plentiful to a time when it's relatively scarce. It's riskier, but if they
succeed, everybody wins: they make money, and they do it by lessening that
future scarcity.

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DonHopkins
Thanks for this link! I'm in Amsterdam, and I really wish I knew about this
web site during Sail from August 19-23! It happens every four years. It would
have been a great way to identify all the ships we saw, especially when they
were all moored in the IJ during the fireworks. Is there any way to replay
historic information?
[https://vimeo.com/141042923](https://vimeo.com/141042923)

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tomohawk
During the oil 'crisis' in the 70's, when there were long lines of cars at the
gas stations, my dad remembers seeing fully loaded tankers stacked up at Tampa
for a long period of time. The speculation ranged from (a) the president
wanted to use the crisis to drive a different energy policy, to (b) the oil
companies were waiting to offload as the price kept climbing.

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jfno67
I wonder if all those tankers next to Fujairah are indicating the same thing.
[http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:56/centery:...](http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:56/centery:25/zoom:10)

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ozim
Looks like same near Netherlands:
[http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:3/centery:5...](http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:3/centery:51/zoom:10)

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HiLo
Yeah, there's also 50% of the US' refining capacity along the Gulf Coast, as
well as a _massive_ new surge of crude and therefore products in the area.
They simply can't get enough dockspace or pipeline takeaway capacity to make a
meaningful dent.

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intrasight
It's also cool to see the clusters waiting each side of the Panama Canal

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smegel
Wow. I'm talking about the webpage.

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zerstroyer
So is the risk of an tsunami so low there that it is considered safe to have
fully loaded oiltankers idle off the coast, or would this be not a problem for
those tankers?

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PudgePacket
The way tsunamis affect different locations is quite interesting! The wave
length (distance between two peaks/troughs) at sea can be hundreds of
kilometers long, a tsunami could pass under your tiny boat while out at sea
and you wouldn't even notice it. It's only as they approach land that the
shallow depths force the wavelength to shorten, forming the giant waves we
usually associate with tsunamis.

[1]
[http://www2.scholastic.com/content/images/articles/sn_ts/sn_...](http://www2.scholastic.com/content/images/articles/sn_ts/sn_ts_031111_diagram.jpg)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami)

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zerstroyer
So i looked at this map
[http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/11323.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/11323.shtml)
and the water depth seems to be about 60 feet if i'm doing it right, i don't
know if this is considered safe in such cases or how long they would take to
reach a safe depth. Guess it just makes me uncomfortable to have them idle
there fully loaded to make a better buck.

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drone
I don't think there's ever been a Tsunami in Galveston Bay. Now hurricanes...
Like another poster said, they're safer out there than closer in, and having
them inside the actual Galveston bay would be incredibly dangerous due to
congestion.

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PhantomGremlin
About 66 million years ago there was probably quite the Tsunami in Galveston
Bay. Courtesy of the Chicxulub impactor.

But you might be right, I'm not really sure what the landmasses looked like so
long ago. Also I don't think the place was actually named "Galveston Bay" at
the time. :)

