Why a trader cares
Physical movement can confirm a price story, but vessel datasets also contain coverage gaps, stale destinations, and cargo uncertainty that must remain visible.
Data & AnalyticsPhysical Flows
Physical confirmationLive
Check whether visible barrels, vessels, and transport economics support the narrative.
Physical Flows connects crude-on-water history with terrestrial AIS, vessel activity, tanker freight, LNG shipping, and explicit coverage quality.
Question answered
What movement is observable, and does it support or contradict the balance thesis?
Built for more than one level of market experience
Start simple. Keep the professional context.
Every screen preserves the instrument, period, unit, source, and limitation while explaining why the evidence matters.
Start here01
Identify the observation before interpreting it.
Read the instrument, unit, timestamp, period, and source first. A weekly stock estimate and a five-minute futures quote answer different questions.
Desk read02
Compare level, change, and historical context.
The current value matters less without its direction of travel, seasonal baseline, related markets, and the catalyst that moved expectations.
Professional use03
Demand cross-source confirmation and preserve uncertainty.
Treat every dataset as evidence with a release lag, methodology, revision risk, and known blind spots. The workflow should be reproducible after the fact.
Component guide
What each component means—and how a desk reads it.
Definitions stay plain enough to learn from, while the desk read preserves the mechanism, cadence, and source a professional user expects.
Crude on water
In plain English
A daily estimate of crude barrels represented by covered vessels and the product's normalized movement logic.
Professional read
Focus on the direction and persistence of the estimate, then test it against regional arrivals, freight, and reported trade.
- Cadence
- Two-hour ingestion with daily summary history
- Source
- Terrestrial AIS-derived estimates
Crude-tanker activity
In plain English
Covered tanker positions, movement states, regional counts, arrivals, and departures.
Professional read
Vessel count alone ignores vessel class, load state, route, and coverage. Use it as observable traffic evidence, not exact cargo volume.
- Cadence
- Two-hour summary
- Source
- Terrestrial AIS
LNG carriers
In plain English
Gas-carrier categories and regional movements provide visible shipping context around export terminals and trade lanes.
Professional read
Carrier activity complements feedgas and official export data; it does not directly measure liquefaction throughput.
- Cadence
- Two-hour summary
- Source
- AIS ship types and registry normalization
Freight confirmation
In plain English
TD3C and TD20 history adds route-level transport economics to visible tanker movement.
Professional read
Price and vessels should be checked together: expensive freight without corresponding traffic can reflect risk or constrained tonnage rather than cargo demand.
- Cadence
- Daily freight history
- Source
- Listed freight futures
Coverage quality
In plain English
Regional recency and observation density indicate whether the physical read is sufficiently observed.
Professional read
A degraded status blocks the strongest inference from zero vessels or an abrupt drop in estimated barrels.
- Cadence
- Every summary
- Source
- AIS coverage checks
What data it uses
The evidence underneath the screen.
- Crude-on-water history and recent estimates
- Terrestrial AIS vessel positions and movement
- Crude tankers and LNG carrier categories
- TD3C and TD20 freight context
- Coverage validation and degradation state
How Enerlytics interprets it
Method before conclusion.
- 01
Separates observation from inferred cargo state
- 02
Uses regional and chokepoint context
- 03
Flags degraded coverage instead of treating an empty map as no activity
How it connects
Evidence moves through a workflow.
- 01Coverage
- 02Observed movement
- 03Regional aggregation
- 04Freight context
- 05Inventory and curve confirmation
What not to infer
AIS is incomplete by construction. Satellite AIS remains coming soon, and inferred destination or cargo should not be treated as a verified bill of lading.
Worked market workflow
Build a physical read with an explicit confidence boundary
The product separates what was observed, what was inferred, and what could not be seen.
- 1
Validate coverage
Check receiver freshness and regional observation density.
- 2
Observe movement
Review vessel class, track, arrival/departure state, and consistent time windows.
- 3
Aggregate
Measure crude-on-water or carrier trends without hiding classification uncertainty.
- 4
Cross-check
Compare freight, EIA trade, storage, LNG feedgas, and curve structure.
Methodology and limitations
Trust comes from showing the seams.
Observation versus inference
Position and timestamp are direct AIS fields. Cargo, destination, load state, and barrels-on-water can involve estimation and are labeled accordingly.
Archival does not erase history
Older raw AIS is archived for cost control while bounded current-state summaries preserve the product workflow without repeatedly scanning the full history.
Primary references
Enerlytics links the underlying methodology so customers can distinguish a product interpretation from the source definition.
See the product
A real Enerlytics workflow—not a conceptual mockup.
Weekly research, recaps, and video explainers
See the evidence used in a real market conversation.
Enerlytics publishes weekly market recaps, component explainers, and thesis walkthroughs. For Physical Flows, the recurring desk question is: Did observable vessel and freight behavior confirm the reported balance this week—or was coverage too weak to know?
Weekly market notes →Written recaps tied to the same evidence workflow.Public signal reviews →Current states with accountability and limitations.Video recaps on X →Short market recaps, chart walkthroughs, and thesis updates.Explainers on Threads →Component education and the reasoning behind each market read.
Related guides
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