oil prices

Among the reasons for today's rebound in oil prices, as noted earlier, is renewed hope that OPEC will reach a deal during the cartel's upcoming meeting in Vienna on November 30. The catalysts include Iraq and Iran, both of whom signaled optimism surrounding the proposed OPEC supply-cut deal, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said his nation is ready to freeze crude output at current levels, and sees no obstacles to an agreement.

To emphasize this, moments ago Putin was quoted by newswires as reiterating a position he laid out over the weekend:

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

OPEC will hold its semi-annual meeting tomorrow. All eyes will be on Vienna. But, when it comes to oil prices, the “golden constant”, not OPEC, rules the roost.

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

$50 per barrel oil is clearly less impossible to live with than $30 per barrel oil, because most businesses cannot make a profit with $30 per barrel oil. But is $50 per barrel oil helpful?

I would argue that it really is not.

When oil was over $100 per barrel, human beings in many countries were getting the benefit of most of that high oil price:

The fate of oil companies and nations hangs in the balance of oil prices. Russia could go broke. Some think that’s by US design. Saudi Arabia could experience its Arab Spring if oil prices remain too low too long. And OPEC is dead. That’s the biggest news in this new century for oil.

Submitted by Rakesh Upadhyay via OilPrice.com,

Ship tracking data from Bloomberg shows that 83 supertankers carrying around 166 million barrels of oil are headed to China, which has stockpiled an impressive 787,000 barrels a day in the first quarter of 2016 - the highest stockpiling rate since 2014.

While the world was speculating about oil prices plunging to $20 and $10 per barrel, China was busy stockpiling its reserves.