What’s the deal?
The Financial Times reports:
For the traditionally dull oil shipping market, the events of the last week have come as a shock.
In a matter of days, Saudi Arabia has hired the largest number of super-tankers in years. When the tankers load their cargo in Ras Tanura, the world’s largest oil terminal, in the next couple of weeks and start a 40-day voyage towards the US Gulf coast, they will deliver a wall of oil with a single aim: to bring prices down.
“This is the first time in several years for [Saudi Arabia] to hit the market with such volume – and in such a short time frame,” says Omar Nokta, a shipping expert at specialist investment bank Dalham Rose & Co…
Where are the Iranian nut cases when you need them.
Green: The color of OPEC money.
Saudi Arabia is signaling to the US and others that Saudi Arabia is still the ‘Saudi Arabia of oil’. It’s a good marketing move to help keep the US dependent on Saudi exports, and to prop up Obama’s anti-US-oil campaign.