Gasoline tankers wait outside New York harbor
NEW YORK — Tankers able to deliver almost 215,000 metric tons of gasoline are waiting outside New York Harbor to unload their cargoes after the worst Atlantic Coast storm in history shut terminals and halted refineries.
Six vessels within a 100-mile radius of the port of New York have been waiting since at least Oct. 28, according to IHS Inc. vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg News today. The tankers, also able to carry cargoes including diesel, are probably being delayed because of the storm and would normally load or unload within two days, according to Truls Dahl, a shipbroker at Astrup Fearnley A/S in Oslo.
Phillips 66 and Hess Corp.’s New Jersey refineries remained shut today, four days after superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast. Delays to shipping along the Atlantic Coast spurred more oil-product cargoes from the Gulf of Mexico. Rates for tankers hauling diesel to Europe from the region increased by more than fourfold to $12,349 a day yesterday, according to data from the London-based Baltic Exchange.
“Gasoline supplies are going to be a very big problem,” Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlooks & Opinions LLC in New York, said today. “Over the next couple of months, because of rebuilding and reconstruction work after the storm, demand is going to be exponentially higher.”
Superstorm Sandy killed at least 37 people in New York, and left 4.8 million people without power, causing as much as $50 billion of damage. The Obama administration said today it waived the requirement that only U.S. ships carry goods between the country’s ports in an effort to ease fuel shortages in the Northeast.
Fewer Charters
Bookings of oil tankers to ship European gasoline to New York slumped following the storm. Traders and oil companies booked 26 vessels in the two weeks to Nov. 14 compared with 16 in the prior two-week period.
The Glory Express, a 45,728-deadweight-ton tanker laden with gasoline, is waiting in New York Harbor, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. The vessel, hired by Morgan Stanley, first signaled for the harbor on Oct. 28, and then entered on Nov. 1, the data show. Larissa Haida, a London-based spokeswoman for the bank, declined to comment by phone today.
As many as eight diesel cargoes were booked for loading from the Gulf of Mexico before Nov. 10, Charles Martin, head of clean tankers at MJLF & Associates, a Stamford, Connecticut- based shipbroker, said yesterday. There would normally be about three such shipments over a comparable period, he said.
Thirty-four tankers able to carry gasoline were signaling New York as their destination, the IHS Inc. ship-tracking data show.