I thought we’d get a nice, quiet August. Okay not really, but I hoped for that.
We all could use a break from the madness. I know that.
But, Europe is busy doing its best impression of a slow-motion train wreck and, wouldn’t you know it, nature has decided to add to that unfolding disaster by throwing a major drought at most of the continent.
The river Po in Italy is in dire shape as we’ve previously covered. Now, the Rhine River is already too low to support full barge traffic and is dangerously close to being shut down entirely.
If that happens, the already struggling German industrial centers found along its banks will buckle.
Next, the oil “market” is still sending very odd signals that either leads me to conclude it’s being manipulated to lower prices by U.S. government officials or proxies, or provides proof positive that speculator-driven markets are broken. I lean toward the latter explanation.
Either way, the signals being sent to oil companies is “don’t bother producing more, we’ve apparently got plenty!” and so we will get less supply in the future, not more. Even more tragically, “demand construction” will result as people consume more, not less, in response to lower prices. This will, in turn, lead to even lower future supplies.
One glaring mismatch is that the U.S. Energy Information Agency published data showing the U.S. gasoline demand has cratered while GasBuddy has data showing the exact opposite.
by sand_puppy