I monitor MarineTraffic every day to see what is going on in my corner of the world. Today, I saw an unusual number of tankers anchored off Rosarito, Mexico. I’ve traveled through that stretch of water dozens upon dozens of times, and never saw such a crowd there. Currently, there are 10 tankers anchored off the Rosarito terminal, and most show last ports from Houston, with the Rosarito destination. I don’t know for certain what the offshore terminal handles, but my guess is that much of the product powers the nearby power plant and probably road traffic fuels, as well, but it’s unusual to see tankers that aren’t Pemex originating from Lazaro Cardenas, and then there’s usually no more than 3 tankers anchored in the roads. Maybe someone can round out my education?
used to work on long range sportfishing boats out of san diego and we fished all over the baja coast and beyond. Seeing that many tankers off rosarito when we were leaving SD or coming home was fairly common. Have been out of that game for a while now so maybe it changed but 5-10 tankers in the anchorage seemed to be the norm
AIS Traffic also shows an excess of tanker product carriers waiting off the oil terminals on the Mexican Gulf coast. They are mostly foreign flag charted by Pemex. to facilitate importation of products…Their own now relatively small fleet stay coastal…
A lot of product which would normally be sent through pipelines is being shipped coast-wise to mitigate the loss caused by organized crime robbing the pipelines…