UK 16:33 Saturday, 17 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
We are in the midst of a rout and the oil market has literally lost its mind. There is no logic or sense in the market whatsoever.
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Comments
Daniel Victor
All that oil that has been discovered will remain in the ground when those projects are cancelled,ready to be extracted should the price recover.
wildrides
Ooh err Mrs ………… I do like a good spike ……. I am sure my pet oilly would like a good spike too . Sooner rather than later would be good , with not to much fall back and a live cat at the end ( preferably with all legs inplace )
Nice piece as ever ….. interesting and provoking at the same time .
Duck and Dive
Maybe they are factoring in the expectation that electric cars will be in mass production by then?
Angus Palmer
Being a total non-expert in anything to do with this subject, here’s my take. We can clearly see supply and demand working here so of course the price will remain lower, if not lower than today until excess supply falls back to normal levels, or below? But surely the bottom has to be above the level for which the most efficient companies can produce it, otherwise the whole industry disappears. Even the hugely rich Saudi Arabia can only subsidise the price for so long and why jeopardise their huge cash reserves, which they will need to finance their struggles against noisy neighbours?.
Also could not the US, who have said, or at least some analysts have said, have enough oil themselves to cover domestic supply for 100 years, ban oil imports and allow the price to rise naturally at home?
But agreed why would any company sell futures for such a paltry sum, when the only significant way for the oil price is up? Desperation??
J P Spaghetti
Sorry if I’m being obtuse, but are/were the longest dated prices (which I presume are given by the green curve) predicted for a constant period of time into the future or is this also a dynamically changing entity? Perhaps this is a commonly-used metric in the industry. The word “longest” rather than “long” is suggesting the latter, and, if so, it would surely muddy the interpretation.
Interesting article indeed. A pal of mine is now out of work as a result of the current price (he was formerly ex-Petrofac and glad to be so), and I’m sure he’d find this interesting too.
Complete Madness was the first album I bought as a kid, by the way. Great act – their endearing comedic antics should not detract from the quality of their musicianship (which was exceedingly high).
Just one more thing, and I hope I’m not being petulant – given the prevalence of red-green colour blindness (so why have, of all colours, red and green men at traffic lights?!), perhaps it would be worth differentiating future plots further by using solid and broken lines.