From Bloomberg via The Edge, Singapore, April 21:
Asia’s largest oil buyers have been able to lean on workarounds to limit the impact of more than seven weeks of war in the Persian Gulf, shielding not only their own economies but those of neighbors competing for cargoes.
That luck is beginning to run out.
To cope with an unprecedented energy shock, China and India have turned to everything from bilateral agreements with Tehran to tapping cargoes of Russian and Iranian oil already on the water. But now those floating supplies are slowly drying up and — to make matters worse — traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is at a standstill, with even blacklisted vessels that serve China’s private refining sector hesitant to test a US blockade.
India is unquestionably the more vulnerable of the two. It leans on the Gulf not only for crude but for liquefied petroleum gas, used for cooking, where shortages have been acute. With limited stockpiles, the world’s third-largest oil importer has cranked up Russian shipments to fill the gap, largely protected by US waivers.
Refiners say they are covered for the coming month — but prices are far from discounts seen in the years since the invasion of Ukraine, and the volume of oil on the water is rapidly shrinking.
In mid-February, there were 20 million barrels of Russian crude in floating storage and available to be bought. That is now down to less than five million, according to Anoop Singh, global head of shipping research at Oil Brokerage Ltd. Data intelligence firm Vortexa Ltd puts the figure at close to three million barrels....
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