September, you go too hard.

Commodity trivia. I wanted to get this one out there before the rapture. Source: Commodity Research Bureau Yearbook and @barchart.com

Oh, this is going to be an immensely stupid merry-go-round isn’t it? Disney: “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and … we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.” Literally everything is now tentative and subject to public vibe.

"Grok, delete the For You tab"

🎙️ NEW PODCAST 🎧 In the latest episode of Oil Ground Up, I spoke with Ilia Bouchouev to discuss his work on the oil market’s Virtual Barrels—see his book/YouTube channel of same name Who’s who in CoT report and the fundamentals-agents-price relationship. Check out the full fascinating convo below:

🎙️ NEW PODCAST 🎧 In the latest episode of Oil Ground Up, I spoke with Ilia Bouchouev to discuss his work on the oil market’s Virtual Barrels—see his book/YouTube channel of same name Who’s who in CoT report and the fundamentals-agents-price relationship. Check out the full fascinating convo below:

my timeline atm

100% probability of a prediction market confusing stocks and flows

Trump admin: Companies shouldn’t have to report quarterly, we need to think long term! Also Trump admin: quarterly US-China trade war renegotiation time

dancing on graves has to be the all-time idiotic self-inflicted reason to lose your job it's not hard to not celebrate death

Anyone who uses violence to further their politics is a loser with a bad argument.

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗻’𝘁 𝗢𝗶𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿? Chinese counter-economic stock-building and sanctions-related seaborne logistical woes are absorbing the arrival of surplus supply—at least for now. www.commoditycontext.com/p/why-arent-...

Fifth day of school, first runny nose of the school year.

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗻’𝘁 𝗢𝗶𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿? Chinese counter-economic stock-building and sanctions-related seaborne logistical woes are absorbing the arrival of surplus supply—at least for now. www.commoditycontext.com/p/why-arent-...

It's really going to be funny (and telling) which analysts and outlets refer to the next OPEC+ production cut tranche as 1.66 vs 1.65 MMbpd. It sounds like a silly literal rounding error, but it speaks to the group's politics and structure. Gabon is the 0.01 MMbpd.

person with a deep niche focus area: i really think the deep niche focus area is in the driver's seat rn

Oil market giving tremendous First Week of September and Back to School energy

i'll never forgive COVID for truncating all the econ charts

Of the ~1 MMbpd average total global oil surplus observed so far this year, nearly two-thirds ended up in Chinese stocks and another ~30% ended up on water. Negligible volumes ended up in truly visible OECD commercial stocks. That's why prices have remained firm.

Hard not to look at OPEC and see much of the same general decline in the influence of multilateral technocratic orgs we've seen elsewhere in global governance in favour of something more bilateral/tighter group and Realpolitik-driven. From econ optimization to stronger arm pref.

Love waking up to a brisket finishing the night shift.

Disagree? Trump prefers it his way.

US oil demand grew roughly as much (200-300 kbpd y/y) as Chinese oil demand contracted in the first half of 2025.

that flicker of panic after you accidentally Ctrl+A delete like 20k lines of code before fixing it with a little Ctrl+Z

AXIOS: A third Trump adviser put it this way: "Leaving Maduro in power in Venezuela is like making Jeffrey Epstein the head of a daycare."

China is now the largest buyer of ex-Trans Mountain crude, entrenching it as the 2nd-largest buyer of Canadian barrels. But Chinese heavy Canadian crude demand isn't new—China had been steadily buying ever more Canadian crude via US Gulf Coast re-exports, which dried up after TMX entered service.

🎙️ NEW PODCAST 🎧 In the latest Oil Ground Up podcast, I spoke with Brandon Myers, Head of Intelligence at Novi Labs, about the current state and future trajectory of the US shale patch. Are we peaking, how much oil is truly left, and—most importantly—at what price? open.spotify.com/episode/0d32...

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 🇨🇦 Canadian Barrel Goes [Further] Global TMX has shifted Canadian crude flows west, entrenched China as Canada’s second-largest crude export market, and rerouted flows away from recent growth markets like USGC refineries and re-exports. www.commoditycontext.com/p/canadian-b...

how dare you

it's time

I don't include the US SPR in my read of relative inventory position as a measure of oil market health SPR flows important to capture in balance reconciliation, but they're not market-driven flows. Increasingly reasonable to treat [the bulk of] Chinese stocks this way as well.

Trump tilting at LITERAL windmills

me perpetually to all my Left friends (which is most of them...)

Fwiw this is the bearish outcome for the oil market 1. Less diversification pressure on global benchmarks/Middle Eastern grades 2. All else equal higher tariffs on/econ headwinds for India, which is expected to be the global demand driver and is already currently disappointing

About to finally have a stake in the discourse.

Shot to the heart.

Regular post-Oil Context Weekly team debrief. Jr Intern requested a one-on-one intensive (read: I was seated closer to the guac)

Trump: Ukraine's gotta hit Russia where it hurts Trump, the next day: NO NO NO NOT THE OIL

I'm currently tracking a fresh all-time high for global petroleum demand in June, thanks in large part to a bounceback in Chinese demand. We need to see continual all-time highs going forward to really tighten things up again, but promising to see after a torrid recent stretch.

Alberta premier coming out against Chinese EV tariffs admittedly wasn't on my bingo card. Story: calgaryherald.com/opinion/colu...

I like this chart format from the EIA. Luxury vs non-luxury US car sales by powertrain.

WTI crude prompt timespreads at their weakest level since the April Liberation Day/OPEC hike price collapse. Stronger than expected term structure had been the biggest pushback to the mounting supply glut thesis, and we're now rapidly losing it.

The President of the United States casually dropping that the US would allow (encourage?) Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia to build pressure to end the war—wedged between ads for ED Medication and MyPillow.

Spec positioning in crude is back around the levels we saw in Apr-May—not quite as bad as last September's all-time lows, but still extremely oversold and the grind seems overall directionally lower. But there's a big split between positioning in Brent (meh) and WTI (dear lord)

🛢️🏦 NEW OIL POSITITIONG REPORT 🏦🛢️ Fundamentals still drive the longer-term oil pricing TREND. But the shorter-term headline-vibing chop is increasingly driven by paper market flows, especially by spec participants. I've launched a new weekly report to follow it all closer.

🛢️🏦 NEW OIL POSITITIONG REPORT 🏦🛢️ Fundamentals still drive the longer-term oil pricing TREND. But the shorter-term headline-vibing chop is increasingly driven by paper market flows, especially by spec participants. I've launched a new weekly report to follow it all closer.

Always watching for cool oil maps/art for the office, and this map of 1922 LA-region one has vibes.

Indian Twitter found this tweet on the other website and based on the replies I'd say they're mighty perturbed by the White House's Russian-oil-tariff nonsense. Trump very rapidly undoing decades of US effort to pull New Delhi toward the West and away from Moscow.

INDIAN ARBITRAGE OF RUSSIAN OIL WAS LITTERALLY THE US-CHOSEN POLICY