The Most Ominous Warning That Oil Storage Is About To Overflow Has Arrived

It was just last week when we said that Cushing may be about to overflow in the face of an acute crude oil supply glut.

“Even the highly adaptive US storage system appears to be reaching its limits,” we wrote, before plotting Cushing capacity versus inventory levels. We also took a look at the EIA’s latest take on the subject and showed you the following chart which depicts how much higher inventory levels are today versus their five-year averages.

And now with major US refiners dumping crude, as we detailed overnight, those fears are surging.

U.S. Energy Information Administration data on Wednesday showed inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub hit a record 64.7 million barrels last week - just 8 million barrels shy of its theoretical limit - stoking concerns that tanks may overflow in coming weeks.

And now, given the "super-contango" in 3-month it is extremely clear that storage concerns are at their highest in 5 years...

Simply put, as one trader noted, speculators are now "making the leap to Cushing storage never being more full... will actually overfill, or even stop taking crude oil deliveries outright."