Rembrandt - thanks once again for this excellent publication which one day will assure your place in the history books.

Figure 1 is perhaps the most astonishing. From this it is near impossible to guess that the oil markets are in turmoil - so maybe they are not? As Bluetwilight points out, these figures mask a bounce in Azeri and US crude production. Its likely that UK and Norwegian production is also recovering from Summer maintenance.

With the last OPEC cut (November) yet to be fully implemented and what seems likely to be a 2+ mmbpd cut from OPEC and Russia today in the pipeline the supply situation looks set to tighten significantly going into the winter.

The UK has just had its coldest start to winter for 30 years (MET office) and as a forthcoming article from Rune will show, this means we have already eaten deeply into our gas storage levels with potential nat gas shortages on the horizon. Part of the UK's fall back position is oil fired power generation and so I wonder if we may not see a surge in oil demand if the uncommonly cold weather persists in W Europe.