News

January 04, 2010

Playing The Waiting Game: Oil Storage A Key Factor To Watch In 2010

By Martin CLark

The sight of crude oil tankers sitting off the Suffolk shoreline is all too common for residents of the old-fashioned seaside town of Southwold.

For some visitors, the fully laden ships, waiting for oil prices to strengthen, are even quite a spectacle; others fear the potential environmental catastrophe should things go wrong.
It is the same story for residents of Brixham in Devon, hundreds of miles away, where tankers have been parked for months off Lyme Bay.

But it is not a phenomenon common only to quaint English coastal resorts. Tankers all over the world are now being used for crude oil and products storage, holding their...