Following the COVID-19 crisis, Canadian and Alaskan crude which normally travels to the US West, started to finding a market in China, where condition is almost back to the pre-outbreak levels.
According to Bloomberg data, Sofia became the second oil tanker in less than a month to ship Alaskan oil to Qingdao, China, when it left Valdez over the weekend.
What is more, Maria Princess left Vancouver also bound for Qingdao, becoming at least the third oil tanker to sail from British Columbia to China this year.
For the records, the vast majority of Alaskan as well as Canadian oil, shipped down the Trans Mountian pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia, originally winds up supplying refineries in either Washington state or California.
Concluding, flows have been disrupted amid depressed U.S. West Coast oil consumption caused by state-ordered lockdowns that have kept drivers off the roads during the coronavirus pandemic.
On the other hand, China which suffered first from the virus is further along in opening back up with oil demand almost to where it was before lockdowns began earlier in the year.