SEOUL: South Korea’s energy ministry has said that the country’s 8.2 million barrels of commercial oil storage facility has been fully leased, although actual storage is below 40 percent as of last month.
Oil traders are scrambling to secure leases to stockpile deeply discounted prompt crude, with the hope of selling them at higher prices later thanks to a market structure known as contango. Demand on the storage facility located in the city of Yeosu, over 300 km south of Seoul, has surged since October 2014 as the market turned to contango, a market structure in which futures prices are higher than those of prompt month, the ministry said in a statement.
