Tank terminals play a vital role in daily oil trading by enabling break and making bulk operations and balancing short term variations in supply and demand. Oil trading companies have an interest in renting tank storage capacity as the oil derivatives market is related to physical oil markets. For ARA oil products ICE gasoil futures are one of the most important trading tools to manage risk. In the image below you can see the ICE LS Go Futures graph.

The backwardation at the beginning of the gasoil curve decreased to to +$0.00 despite far higher spot prices, while the contango in the middle decreased substantially. Trading opportunities have therefore become harder to find.

As gasoil inventories in the region are higher pressure is put on local gasoil prices, while higher crude prices make refinery input more expensive. As a result, Brent crude crack spreads are weak and this could lead to lower output of local refiners. Currently the tank storage market is in backwardation, traders have no incentive to store gasoil and will minimize inventory levels. That is why the demand for storage capacity will decrease when the market is in backwardation.

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