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I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

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Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#31

Post by ldoughty »

rhizome wrote: post #28
foota wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone got a spare oil tanker? :-) I only slightly kid, makes me wonder how quickly I could acquire a number of oil storage units. edit: this tanker is off the gulf coast right now... https://horizonship.com/ship/274m-suezmax-crude-oil-carrier-...

Just with a cursory "oil tanker for sale" search, they appear to be for sale in the $10-20MM range.

If the oil tanker can hold 2,000,000 barrels at -$35/ barrel you are being paid $70 million to store the oil for a few months...

Of course, the next question is who pays for transport to/from the tanker, labor, dock fees, employees in ship (unless you can simply "park" it for a fee)

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#32

Post by mastratton3 »

Frost1x wrote: post #12
scurvy wrote: post #10

Considering that the front-month oil contracts went negative today (paid to buy a barrel of oil), I think more (well funded and adept) players will try to hastily arrange more storage facilities. There's just no place to put the stuff right now. It's quite difficult to turn-off an active well. Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop.

>Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop. While I realize you're referring to a functioning deep-water well, working as designed, I can't help but remember the complete mess from Deepwater Horizon. If it's difficult to stop a correctly functioning deep-water well, I have even more respect for that mess of a situation (and a bit more disdain for the practice in general): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwat…

That occurred during drilling not production so all the standard well head facilities were not in place.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#33

Post by cbanek »

Well, this aged well:

"The story of how I came to own physical oil begins in late 2008, when fallout from the financial crisis spurred the crude market into severe contango—meaning the price of oil for future delivery was higher than the expected price of immediate “spot” delivery. While contango is the usual and persistent state of the oil futures curve, this particular "super" version helped create the perfect conditions for an almighty oil storage trade as the price of crude for future delivery vastly eclipsed the cost-of-carry and storage expenses of petroleum bought in the spot market."

This is exactly where we are now, only the prices are much lower and the demand even weaker?

I remember reading this the first time it came out. Only better the second time.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#34

Post by entangledqubit »

rhizome wrote: post #28
foota wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone got a spare oil tanker? :-) I only slightly kid, makes me wonder how quickly I could acquire a number of oil storage units. edit: this tanker is off the gulf coast right now... https://horizonship.com/ship/274m-suezmax-crude-oil-carrier-...

Just with a cursory "oil tanker for sale" search, they appear to be for sale in the $10-20MM range.

Just make sure they don't sell it to you already filled with "thank you" oil...

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#37

Post by entangledqubit »

chha wrote: post #25
foota wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backhoes are cheap. Maybe environmental issues? I imagine someone would have a problem if I just dug a hole and filled it.

> Maybe environmental issues? Amongst others. It's not enough to just dig a hole in the ground, you have to make sure it doesn't seep into the ground as well. In addition, you have the always present risk of fire...

Unfortunately, right now it seems that there is incentive out there for oil to "go missing" for a profit -- presumably at the cost of the environment. I'm curious if anyone is thinking about trying to replace their fracking fluid with oil for a while...

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#38

Post by downerending »

foota wrote: post #22
Digory wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The negative price has to do with the short delivery date, and the lack of storage at the (landlocked) delivery point. June 2020 WTI is still over $20/barrel. If anyone had storage to bring online in the next few weeks, in Cushing, Oklahoma, they'd make a killing. At this point, they're going to need to ship it to a port, to get on a tanker.

Anyone got a spare oil tanker? :-) I only slightly kid, makes me wonder how quickly I could acquire a number of oil storage units. edit: this tanker is off the gulf coast right now... https://horizonship.com/ship/274m-suezmax-crude-oil-carrier-...

Actually, I think the real players have already been doing this for a few weeks. If there's a buck to be made, you can bet someone is on it.

I was wondering whether they couldn't rapidly build some new storage (cost-effectively), but probably the answer is no.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#39

Post by hanniabu »

scurvy wrote: post #10

Considering that the front-month oil contracts went negative today (paid to buy a barrel of oil), I think more (well funded and adept) players will try to hastily arrange more storage facilities. There's just no place to put the stuff right now. It's quite difficult to turn-off an active well. Deep-water wells are all but impossible to stop.

I fully expect some environmental accident b/c that's cheaper than paying people to take it. Also considering at least in the US, the EPA was told not to investigate things during the shut down.

Re: I tried to buy an actual barrel of crude oil (2015)

#40

Post by jedberg »

dang wrote: post #29
kryogen1c wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you considered some kind of presubmission check for this? even just to inform users without actually screening, and then auto appending previous discussions if submitted?

Yes but it's not clear how to get it right.

If you auto merged the comments from the last time, in theory they would quickly fall to the bottom because their time based value would be so much lower than the new stuff.

Maybe also disable replies to old comments and make them a different color?

To be fair, we could never figure out how to get this right on reddit either, but HN has a better comment sorting algorithm than reddit so it might actually work here.

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