The balance scale is swinging negative

As the picture is starting to develop for global oil supplies this winter many of the discussions seems to focus on the overall size of the demand/supply levels. And when you are talking about numbers on the order of 85 mbd a variation of 100,000 bd is not a very large number. Thus the seeming risks of small changes in production are not evident.

However if we focus more narrowly on the likely difference in range between available supply and overall demand, then the range between potential oversupply and shortage is somewhere in the region of 1 mbd or less. It is in this framework that we need to look at some of the likely influences on supply between now and the end of the year, as demand is likely to grow steadily from this point forward. It was Everett Dirksen who first said