why in the world would you want to store that much crude? IN additition to expense is a list of liabilities. Read what happened off New Orleans to get an appreciation for what will be happening to BP's profits the next 5 years...
In power trading there is an entire subset OTC market for delivery called FTR, or Financial Transmission Rights. Tower Research Capital thought they'd dabble in it for shits and giggles, and lost like $80M in one trade which bankrupted the shell company LLC Tower was using. Same same with crude - the most fungible and traded storage is actually in transit on the oceans, supertankers of course. OTC traders are swapping the storage rights well before they are even off-loaded. Think about it, you have a futures contract whose front month is on the board maybe three weeks, and tanker transit is several days or more each way. Some great basis plays. There are even composite indices on tanker rates available at your favorite OTC broker. Platts is pretty much the standard for daily publications, you can also find some of them on the Bloomberg terminal in the OTC energy section. Never doubt the appetite for trading - for God's sake, they trade Bat Guano OTC (seriously). You should see all the plastics that LME clears OTC in the physical ring.
It's called being a merchant...it's part of the same process that brings you your morning coffee, your wife's diamond and your kid's chocolate...it's risky, complicated and began long before Black met Scholes.
"Never doubt the appetite for trading - for God's sake, they trade Bat Guano OTC (seriously). " No sh&t?
Your broker will never let you get that close to assignment. He will offset it for you going into first notice even if you don't want to. And he will stick you with a conversion factor settlement that you will certainly not like, and since you are a buyer you get stuck with the tab - even reconciled before final notice the expenses are significant. Just because he clears your shit for a 25 cent haircut on 100 contracts per month doesn't obligate him to arrange for physical delivery - he can legally offset it if it puts his firm at risk for delivery. Take a careful look at your FCM agreement - you have no legal right to take or make final physical delivery unless you've posted what is called 'bonafides'. (basically a first lien on your commercial equipment and assets) Are there big spec firms that do it? Absolutely - GlenCore, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Koch Energy, and a couple of IBs used to lease storage space.