I thought the party was over when the Hin Leong scandal came to light.
From Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, September 6:
The oil party isn’t over yet — but for top merchants and executives gathering for talks and rooftop cocktails in Singapore this week, the exuberance that came with the outsized profits of recent years is quickly fading.
China’s economic slowdown, structural shifts in the global energy mix and the prospect of additional crude supply are all weighing on refiners and producers. Processing margins have tumbled. Traders will be no less glum, as the turbulence of the pandemic and of the months that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — once-in-a-generation events — have been replaced by low volatility.
The thousands of oil executives, hedge funds and investors gathering for the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC) will be facing up to the grim reality that is already forcing Wall Street analysts to revise down price and demand forecasts. In recent weeks, global oil prices have erased all gains for this year. OPEC and allied nations have found themselves compelled to postpone a supply hike that could have tipped the market into surplus.
Sentiment is unquestionably bearish, said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy for ING Groep NV in Singapore, absent a return to the geopolitical uncertainty and trading frenzy of the years when Donald Trump was in the White House. “It would take something like Trump coming back in to shake things up again to add that kind of excitement and turbulence back into the market.”
Of all the gloomy topics at Asia’s biggest oil gathering of the year, the toughest to avoid will be China — and the question of whether cooling consumption is masking a more permanent decline in fossil fuel use as clean energy takes hold.
Beijing’s economic troubles run deep, and indicators have repeatedly sounded warnings on demand in the world’s largest crude importer, until recently a key source of growth for global crude. In August, factory activity contracted for a fourth straight month, while loan data has been uninspiring and the job market dour. Economists are now forecasting China will fall short of delivering its growth target of around 5% this year.
Traders who anticipated a stimulus-led recovery have repeatedly been forced to revise their forecasts, initially pushing the revival back to early this year and now into 2025....
....MUCH MORE
Ah, not Singapore's oil party but the oil party in Singapore.
Still though, the Hin Leong crash was pretty loud. Here's part of the Universal Oil Terminal tank farm, part of which itself was part of O.K. Lim's empire (there were a lot of parts):
About which we noted:
The corporate brochure says 2.33 million cubic meter capacity which, our handy calculator tells us, is 14.65 million barrels. Plus room for some big boats.
By comparison Cushing Oklahoma's capacity is only 5 times that (assuming effective capacity is 85% of 'shell' capacity).
And no big boats.
Talk about a strategic asset, strategically locate: SINGAPORE, DO NOT ALLOW THIS!!
