Oil firms float finished fuel products on Arabian Sea as demand slumps

US Oil futures touched an unprecedented negative pricing on Monday over low demand and scarce storage. Closer home Indian refiners are facing a similar issue with their refined products, forcing companies like Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) to float some products in the Arabian Sea.
This is not the first time oil companies have used floating storage, however, officials point out using this option due to a large scale slump in demand and fully utilized tankages is a first.
"We are floating products like motor spirit and reformates," said a senior BPCL official. "These are in chartered ships, floating in the Arabian Sea. They will either will go to exports or be brought back for internal consumption depending on demand."
The official pegged the volumes to be lower at a few thousand tonnes of different products.
Since the nationwide lockdown was announced in March, India's fuel consumption has taken a major hit. Most industry executives said demand for petrol and diesel fell to a third of the normal, while demand for aviation turbine fuel (ATF) is now negligible, following the suspension of international and domestic flights.
The decline in demand has forced oil companies to run refineries at lower utilisation levels.
"Right now, the utilisation for refineries is at 50 to 60 per cent," the official quoted earlier in the story said.

Industry executives remain hopeful with that factory and agricultural work now resuming, demand for petrol and diesel will improve.

Trump lost $1.17 billion over 10 years on failed business deals: Report

International News
President Donald Trump, who won the presidency in part on his image as a successful business mogul, lost $1.17 billion over 10 years on failed business deals, according to tax records obtained by the New York Times.

The losses, in the 1980s and 1990s, were greater than those reported by nearly any other American taxpayer during that period, according to Internal Revenue Service data the Times said it had reviewed. In 1990 and 1991, according to the Times report, Trump’s loses of $250 million a year were more than double those of the nearest taxpayer the IRS collected information on.

Democrats in Congress have been battling for the release of the president’s more recent returns, a clash that may likely end in court. Trump sold himself to voters as a master deal maker, who could bring the same success to the country as he did to his businesses. While he never personally filed for bankruptcy, his businesses sought bankruptcy protection four times.

The Times said it did not obtain the actual tax returns, but instead received Trump’s IRS tax transcripts that included figures from his federal 1040 tax form from someone who had legal access to it. The Times said it was able to verify some of the figures by cross referencing them to other documents they had obtained.


 The losses cover Trump’s taxes from 1985 to 1994. The losses began with $46.1 million in 1985 from casinos, hotels and retail space, and grew year after year, the Times reported. The returns also show how Trump’s primary sources of income changed each year from stock market earnings -- in part from boosting stock prices by suggesting he would take over a company -- to an unexplained $52.9 million gain in interest income.Yet the income was offset each year by losses, which were so great that Trump would have been able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years.