edit: this tanker is off the gulf coast right now... https://horizonship.com/ship/274m-suezmax-crude-oil-carrier-...
I was wondering whether they couldn't rapidly build some new storage (cost-effectively), but probably the answer is no.
A bunch of gulf coast fisherman, effectively unemployed by Corona hatch a plan to make a buck by taking advantage of the negative price of oil futures. They pool their resources and somehow get their hands on a derelict Venezuelan tanker, cheap because of favorable exchange rates, in order to take delivery of some obscene amount of crude as part of a scheme to make money on futures. Being on a budget of course they crew the thing themselves, it's a ship after all, just a little bigger than the ones they usually handle. Things don't exactly go as planned when they travel to Venezuela to take possession of the ship. Their journey from there to the Port of Houston to pick up their cargo is mired by an incompetent coast guard, environmental activists and a vengeful ex-wife turned local politician.
Of course, the next question is who pays for transport to/from the tanker, labor, dock fees, employees in ship (unless you can simply "park" it for a fee)
It looks like most tankers are ~200,000 metric tons which at ~8 barrels per metric ton is roughly 1.6 million barrels. You also really only need to store it for a month, I think June futures are around $20 still, and so it's a diff of ~$60/barrel.
Details of the above are important to get just right. It works out if you get all the details right.
Barrels 2000000
lease cost / day $350,000.00
Barrel cost -$37
Take delivery profit $74,000,000.00
After 180 days storage $63,000,000.00
Sell/barrel $20
Net $51,000,000.00
I also specifically said "front month contract".
June oil is barely over $20 today and will probably drop under that mark by week's end.
If anyone had storage to bring online in the next few weeks, in Cushing, Oklahoma, they'd make a killing. At this point, they're going to need to ship it to a port, to get on a tanker.