When it comes to looking past the short-term crude oil price dip, some oil traders are seizing the opportunity to turn a profit by hiring supertankers to serve as temporary storage until prices rebound.

Freight brokers and shipping sources told Reuters that trading firms Trafigura Beheer BV and The Vitol Group, along with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, booked crude tankers for up to 12 months. This sort of long-term booking activity is unusual, which suggests that the firms are using the vessels for storage rather than immediate delivery.

The fixture list obtained by Reuters showed that Vitol booked mega-ship TI Oceania, an Ultra Large Crude Carrier with 3 million barrels (3 MMbbl) of crude capacity as well as the 2 MMbbl Maran Corona Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC). Swiss-based Trafigura hired at least one VLCC, the Nave Synergy, while Shell booked the Xin Run Yang and Xin Tong Yang VLCCs.

Booking rates for VLCCs generally don’t come cheap—Bloomberg reported that tankers shipping the benchmark route, bringing Middle East oil to Japan, earned $83,853 a day on Jan. 13. However, this strategy still makes sense given that the market is currently in contango, with prices for deliveries in the future well above expected future spot prices. It also seems traders are getting a great deal on these bookings, under $40,000 a day, by agreeing to take older, less fuel-efficient carriers under long-term contracts, according to Reuters.

While this is a smart financial move for the commodities traders, it has also been a boon for supertanker owners. Morgan Stanley raised its average 2015 rate forecast for VLCCs to $45,000 a day on Jan. 12, a $10,000 increase from the previous estimate, citing potential demand for floating storage.

“This is going to tighten the market and make the entire market move higher,” Fotis Giannakoulis, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York, told Bloomberg. “If contango keeps deepening it wouldn’t be a surprise” for the biggest tankers to earn more than $100,000 a day, he said, although for the rate to get that high “a very steep contango” would be necessary.

The tanker booking rate hasn’t been above $100,000 a day since July 30, 2008, Bloomberg reported. An increase to that level during 2015 would likely only be temporary because the contango “cannot” stay high enough to drive up storage for “too long,” Giannakoulis said.

Even with that likely price ceiling in mind, it’s all good news for owners of VLCCs. Frontline Ltd., Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., which control a combined 11% of the fleet, indicated that orders for storage tankers have been multiplying, and Morgan Stanley and investment banking advisory firm Evercore Partners Inc. told Bloomberg they expect the highest shipping rates since 2009, when about 5.5% of the global fleet was used for crude storage. Giannakoulis said the maximum amount of its capacity the fleet can use for storage is about 10%, or 215 MMbbl. With Reuters reporting that current bookings for floating storage have only reached between 12 MMbbl and 15 MMbbl, there’s still a lot of room for the tanker storage market to grow in 2015.

Analysts at Vienna-based JBC Energy said in a recent note that the increase in storage may also lead to some relief for the crude market during the coming weeks, Reuters reported.

“This will not only release some pressure on front-end prices, but also allow for the physical market to clear somewhat,” the note said. “The physical market could also turn temporarily supportive over the coming months thanks to the balancing effect of floating storage.”