Each week I give a price projection for the average price of oil over the next 90 days. As I have hinted over the past few weeks, there would come a time when the best forecast was no forecast at all. I think that time has come. Oil fell by 33% from Bastille day to the end of September. In seven short weeks, oil has fallen another 50% from 100.00 to 50.00. It’s interesting to recall that the late 2004 fall from 55.00 back to 40.00 was considered a crash. As was the 2006 smackdown from 78.00 to 50.00. Both of those were also considered to be definitive closures, to this decade’s bull market in oil.
Worryingly, oil at 50.00 represents an extraordinary level of potential supply destruction. non-OPEC production, flat for six years, is understandably starting to fall, and fall quickly. non-OPEC production is the world’s supply of free-market oil that responds to the best of its ability, to price. It’s also the most expensive oil, extracted from harsh or unconventional locations, and subject to free-market labor costs. 
As the supply of oil falls along with price, the world crawls ever so steadily towards a rather bifurcated outcome. One one hand, when the reversal eventually arrives the move higher will be violent. On the other hand, the longer oil stays at these very low levels we begin to get confirmation of the state of the global economy. For example, if you tell me that oil is certain to fall back to 20.00, then I can tell you with equal certainty that economic activity globally and domestically will be so low that the remaining US financial institutions will fall to nationalization, as there will be no way the private debt can be serviced.
-Gregor
graphic courtesy of The Oil Drum and ASPO Netherlands.
