Time to go to work
It’s that time of year again. You may have spent the summer overseeing a seasonal business or even relaxing in the sun. In any case it’s about show time. One man’s painful winter of snow filled driveways and snow fall traffic is another’s winter of action and profit. And trust me ‘ I wish you well even as I eye the days getting shorter and the clothes getting heavier. With that in mind, we take a look at a variety of oil-heavy topics in this issue.
From a price perspective, this issue’s Oil Price Outlook notes that it should be a sane year from a volatility standpoint with prices remaining relatively low and if anything maybe moving down a bit. Relatively low is unfortunately likely way too high compared to what supply and demand says they should be, as the article details.
When I first started covering oil prices a decade ago from crude to refined products, it was a different world. OPEC was making waves by efforts generate a ‘price basket” in the now astronomically, but at the time notably high $20 per bbl. range. The price of refined products was similarly depressed. If prices did rise notably back then it was because of some infrastructure disruption that would settle out quickly enough. And the peak prices back then were comparable to relatively modest prices today in our new reality. We now see crude prices in the $70 per bbl. range and the corresponding refined product prices, and think: ‘It could be worse