I am confused by articles like The Last Word: Adnan Shihab-Eldin, wherein he claims "Clearly the prices are driven by concerns over future supply interruptions, geopolitical tensions and natural disasters--which unfortunately have materialized. But we believe that the fundamentals are sufficiently strong to deal with that. At least for crude, supply has been running ahead of demand for the last two years."

How does this work? If a supplier has X to sell on an open market, don't buyers have to want to buy more than X for the scenario Mr. Shihab-Eldin describes to be true? How can panic affect this? Are they buying more than will be ultimately used by consumers? I would think that once enough crude for the segment of time the supply is meant to cover has been purchased, demand for that crude would drop.