International trading houses such as Trafigura, Vitol, Gunvor, Koch and oil company Shell have rented upwards of 20 tankers vessels and are currently using the vessels to store around 40 million barrels of oil in the expectation of reaping future financial gains if and when the oil price begins to rise again.

According to Reuters, the use of supertankers as floating storage facilities is growing significantly. Last week market sources told the news agency that around 25 million barrels of oil were loaded onto tanker vessels.