Crude Storage could fill in 3 months or ...maybe notCanada
Hardisty, Edmonton and Kerrobert are currently holding a total 20 million barrels of oil, which is about half of their cumulative capacity
Hardisty would be the start point for both Energy East and Keystone XL.
The companies that own the most oil storage at Hardisty – including Enbridge, TransCanada and Gibson Energy Inc. – have been adding to their capacity. TransCanada, for instance, is adding 2.6 million barrels of capacity by 2016 and Gibson is adding 2.3 million barrels.
So the new capacity at Hardisty – on its own – could store every barrel produced in the West in a single day, with room left over.... https://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/18/oil-storage-piles-up-in-hardisty-but-price-gap-leaves-traders-at-disadvantage/?__lsa=b200-d6d7
An Aside comment...
CALGARY, Alberta-- Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Monday that the company would withdraw its regulatory application to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency for a 200,000-barrel-a-day oil project known as the Pierre River North surface mine in northern Alberta.
USA
Current report of oil in storage 434mb.
From the EIA reports,... https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/storagecapacity/storagecapacity.pdf .... it suggests gross storage capacity of 450 million barrels (mb) at tank farms and 180 mb at refineries, for a total of 630 mb. Of this amount, approximately 20 mb is idle for maintenance or for other reasons (such as refineries blowing up).
as well, some capacity is reserved for use by the operators, resulting in a net working storage of about 372 mb and 148 mb at tank farms and refineries respectively, for a total of 520 mb
There's also what's in the pipelines and that used to be accounted for in the refineries and took them up to 215mb
VLCC and ULCC
A Very Large Crude Carrier holds 2mb, a Ultra Large Crude Carrier holds 3.1mb
There are somewhere between 500 and 600 VLCCs and ULCCs in operation . It's hard to pin point exact #s ... that's because some are being scrapped while others are put into service newly built. And they will be hidden by investment banks and hedge funds (who can pay the $45,000-$75,000 p/d) cost for profit.
But if you use 500 and make them all VLCCs then that equates to 0NE billion barrels of storage capacity.