Heavy crude oil is piling up across the Americas even as refiners in Europe and Asia struggle to secure barrels, creating an unusual split in the global market. Reuters reported shipping costs have surged as tanker availability tightened, pushing the cost of moving a supertanker from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia above $80 million, or roughly $40 a barrel. U.S. refineries are already running near their highest utilization rate in nearly three decades, limiting how much additional crude they can absorb. The result is a logistics problem with economic consequences: oil can be abundant in one region and scarce in another when transportation costs become too high to connect the two markets efficiently.