In late May, the oil tanker Anne – three football fields long and six stories high – steamed into the port in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Now, oil tankers in the Gulf Coast are nothing new. They come from all over the world, all the time, full of oil, to supply U.S. refineries there.

But the Anne was different…

For one, it was the first time an oil tanker that large – capable of holding up to 2 million barrels of oil – had ever docked at an American oil terminal in the Gulf Coast.

More importantly, the Anne was flat-out empty…

You see, the goal wasn't to bring oil into port… but to haul oil out to export it to world markets.

As the investment world prepares for what is becoming the most sought-after IPO in history, problems may be forming on the horizon.

The IPO is for a 5% position in the largest oil producer in the world – Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company.

When the dust clears from this one, a new sovereign wealth fund will be set up with as much as $2 trillion in purchasing power. Instantly, this will be the largest ever established.

This will usher in one of the most interesting diversification programs ever attempted.

For the first time, a country will change the nature of its domestic economy by controlling a range of activities outside its own borders.

This makes virtually any publicly traded company anywhere in the world suddenly a potential target for Saudi investment money (and possible control).

Which makes the Aramco IPO uniquely important in the history of stock markets.

But as the world gears up for this hotly anticipated investment roadshow, three complications are setting in that may create some problems for Riyadh…

Finally, after almost a decade of historically low interest rates, the Fed is removing the proverbial punch bowl from the easy money party.

As it stands, Yellen & Co. are only moving rates a mere 0.25% each time – most recently June 14, for the second time this year.

That's great news for anyone looking for investment income.

But unfortunately, it also means projections of doom and dread for oil prices are now running rampant.

These talking heads would have you believe that the sky is once again about to fall, because higher interest rates are supposedly dire news for oil prices.

In its recent 2018 budget, the Trump administration included a huge energy announcement.

While it went mostly under the radar, the budget included a proposal to sell half of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for some extra revenue.

Now, the SPR was originally established by Congress in 1975, after the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo wreaked havoc on America's fuel supply.

It was designed to hold up to 729 million barrels of crude oil, and as of mid-May, the SPR's underground locations in Texas and Louisiana held about 688 million barrels.

Selling 350 million or so of those barrels, as proposed, would save some $16.6 billion…

But there's a downside to that proposal, too.

A few years ago, I was called on to make an external value assessment of the storage volume contained in the SPR.

In that report, I identified another crucial advantage to the SPR system.

An advantage that the proposed sell-off is putting at risk…

And one that the U.S. oil industry – a long supporter of the Trump administration – is now clamoring to keep.

Last December, Credit Suisse Group closed two very popular ways of betting on oil to the public.

Both were exchange-traded notes (ETNs) pegged to oil prices, and both had been multibillion-dollar plays that allowed regular people to profit from swings in oil prices.

But while there's no public price listed anymore, financial institutions keep trading these "zombie" notes…

And it's massively distorting oil prices, as we saw with Wednesday's 5% drop in oil prices.