Texas COLT, a proposed joint venture among Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, and Oiltanking, announced that it has submitted an application with the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) to construct and operate a deepwater crude oil export port located off the coast of Freeport, Texas.
The Texas COLT Project incorporates an offshore platform and two offshore loading single point mooring buoys. These will be able to fully load a 2-million-barrel Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) in about 24 hours. The offshore facilities will be connected by a 42″ pipeline to an onshore tank farm that will have up to 15 million barrels of storage capacity.
The submission with MARAD starts the application process for Texas COLT which is expected to be in-service by 2022.
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Commenting about the tanker market, BIMCO said that crude oil tanker freight rates were excellent in October. Namely, monthly average earnings for a VLCC in April and May were less than USD 4,000 per day. In June and July, they increased at USD 7,000-8,000 per day, while in August and September the levels were about USD 11,000 per day. However, October saw average earnings skyrocket to USD 33,500 per day.
Regarding the oil product tanker fleet, tankers will delivered as predicted, while only eight MR orders are placed at a South Korean shipyard since then. BIMCO’s demolition forecast is also the same, predicting an estimated fleet growth of 2.4%, while its fleet growth forecast remains fixed at 2.4%.
What is more, the crude oil tanker fleet is expected increase by 0.9% in 2018, with many depending on the levels of demolition, going into 2019.
Finally, the declining price of crude oil indicates that supply is again running ahead of demand. In this aspect, IEA and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimate that global oil inventories will increase during the end of 2018 and the first half of 2019.
