It’s a buyer’s market for crude

The North American shale boom has been a boon for many smaller energy businesses, but the world's biggest oil companies, including Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil, have had less success unlocking the prolific rock's full potential. Royal Dutch Shell announced it would cut spending by a fifth and lay off staff at its American exploration and production business - AFP Photo.

LONDON: If a single ship can capture the current state of the global oil, it’s the supertanker Saiq, floating idly about 850km south of the Canary Islands.

Until a few days ago, the 330m-long tanker, chartered by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, was steaming at 13 knots toward the Chinese port of Tianjin after loading a two-million-barrel cargo of North Sea oil at the Hound Point terminal near Edinburgh. Then, it suddenly stopped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.