Synthetic storage strategy

Strategy using futures contracts.

• Short on oil with long maturity
• Long on oil with short maturity

Then it acts like you are storing the oil. You have to buy from someone short term, then “deliver” it to someone else later. Can use a rolling hedge.

With this strategy, the firm pays for the physical storer in the futures contract (so basically the market storage price).

If a firm expects their own storage costs to be higher than the futures price storage cost, then this is generally a good strategy. For other firms like the big oil companies that are vertically integrated, their storage costs might be lower, so they would not use a synthetic storage strategy (instead they’ll just store their own oil).

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References

@culp1995