While jagged, speculative interest in major crude contracts has really only trended one way over the past half decade.

🛢️ OIL CONTEXT WEEKLY 🛢️ Crude prices rise through Christmas only to completely reverse course in a Boxing Day selloff; oil markets closing out 2025 at extremely oversold levels and refining margins have fallen back to earth. A short final weekly of 2025, wrapped. (link in reply)

In 2018, the net speculative position in crude contracts stood at >14% of total open interest in those contracts. Today it stands at 0.7%.

We FINALLY have a current picture of spec crude positioning now that the CFTC has caught up following the US gov't shutdown, We're VERY oversold, thanks largely to all-time high spec short positions. But we're still not QUITE as net short as we were at the end of October.

Along with I’m sure many others on here coming out of this Christmas season, this 1,300-page tome is what I’ll be reading for the next month (or two?)

🎄🥰 hope it’s lovely, all!

“The surplus has materialized, instead, in three main places: an acute accumulation of oil on water thanks to rising production and also sanctions; a massive build-up in Chinese strategic stockpiling; and a steady backdrop of growing US NGL inventories.” A very good read.

Reflecting on the year, it's funny how: 1. market initially expected sanctions-happy Trump to be net bullish for crude 2. then decide definitely not, he's actually super bearish 3. but then Trump does actually ramp up sanctions/enforcement and sanctioned crude on water spikes

Ah, yes, why didn’t anyone think to outlaw piracy before?

Reducing spare capacity by pumping more into a supply glut isn't actually bullish.

The problem with the 3-4 MMbpd oil market surplus outlooks for 2026 is that people are going to claim the "glut" thesis was wrong if we only get a 2 MMbpd surplus. That's still a MASSIVE surplus. (I'm tracking a smaller surplus than the IEA through October, but it's still big)

🛢️ OIL CONTEXT WEEKLY 🛢️ Crude prices fell to their lowest level since early-2021 amidst intense speculative selling pressure—and likely record net-short spec position—before Trump’s Venezuela blockade declaration arrested the rout. Summary below, link to full report in reply.

🚨 RECORD SPEC BRENT CRUDE SHORT Managed Money short positions in ICE Brent crude contracts rose more than 40 million barrels over the past week through Tuesday to their current all-time high of 232 million barrels.

*US OIL RIG COUNT DOWN 8 to 406, BAKER HUGHES SAYS

We often talk about how Venezuela needs $50-100bn of fresh investment to right the trajectory of its oil industry. And that's on top of Venezuela's already considerable external debts, which are roughly twice the size of the country's GDP.

This is an important chart. But remember both that: 1) fiscal breakeven prices fall as production rises and rise as production is cut back 2) the other option to reduce fiscal breakeven prices is for governments to spend less

iykyk

oil market trying to check out and slip into its Christmas pajamas meanwhile Venezuela keeps threatening to matter

Spoke with CBC News' @evandyer.bsky.social about what's going on in Venezuela and how different futures for Venezuelan oil change the market for Canadian heavy crude. 1. It's not a near-term issue 2. It'd primarily be USGC competition (in 5+ yrs) 3. All the more reason to GO WEST! 🫡

a pipeline named Abundance

The answer is probably, but surely not immediately Before oil companies pour in the $50-100bn required to turn around Venezuela's oil industry over the next half decade, they're going to require not just Maduro gone but a track record of good governance from whoever replaces him

gm, oil watchers! Brent crude fighting for its life—and currently failing—to keep its head above $60

Trump finishes address without declaring that American tanks will be in Caracas by Friday, crude drops.

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 𝗢𝗶𝗹’𝘀 𝗢𝗳𝗳-𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗚𝗹𝘂𝘁 Global petroleum stocks in 2025 have risen at their fastest pace since 2020, but the product mix, geography, and stage these barrels occupy in the supply chain has thus far spared crude prices. www.commoditycontext.com/p/oils-off-b...

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 𝗢𝗶𝗹’𝘀 𝗢𝗳𝗳-𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗚𝗹𝘂𝘁 Global petroleum stocks in 2025 have risen at their fastest pace since 2020, but the product mix, geography, and stage these barrels occupy in the supply chain has thus far spared crude prices. www.commoditycontext.com/p/oils-off-b...

Good morning, oil watchers! Crude ~$1 higher so far this morning, with Brent fighting to get back and hold above $60 Trump's Venezuela "blockade" announcement has arrested the decline for now. But a buck? That's all? An overstretched spec short geopolitical headline rally for ants?

This won’t push gas prices to $4.50 Look at where crude prices have gone this year.

I think Grok is really adding value in my Twitter replies.

Only the front-two months of the Brent futures curve holding onto increasingly diminished backwardation. Rest is all contango.

Say it with me, follow along real close

My comments to Bloomberg on today's crude selloff.

💀 WTI sub-$55 First time in nearly a half decade.

I'm more worried about oil balances/prices in 2026 than the bulls. And more constructive on later-decade oil balances/prices than the bears. Something for everyone to hate.

Hearing many people fret about oil demand—because why else would prices and structure be weakening so quickly? But demand growth has actually recovered shockingly well this year. It's a supply problem. Between July-Sept, y/y supply growth was running at >3x the pace of demand

Crude term structure also failing. WTI now less than a dime from prompt contango, and Dubai's already there. Brent holding up slightly better, but still far off it's recent front-end strength.

Crude crash continues this morning. Brent crude now clearly below $60, trying next for $59. If sustained*, this will represent the lowest Brent crude close since February 2021. *we briefly went lower intraday in early May

Wow, Ford done with the F-150 [BEV] Lightning. "Ford is rethinking its EV and battery strategy, dropping the all-electric version of the F-150 Lighting and putting more of its money into hybrid trucks and energy storage to support data centers and grid stability." www.axios.com/2025/12/15/f...

🚨 "AB Premier Smith says .. that there’s more than one way to get AB oil to the Pacific Coast Smith said .. that, while her “first preference” would be to build a new West Coast pipeline through northern BC she’s willing to look across the border if progress stalls" nationalpost.com/news/canada/...

The surge in oil on water is most likely a delayed bulge of supply that will finally hit the market and swell onshore stocks/sink prices early next year BUT they're also a leading indicator of sanctioned exporter marketing pains and thus can resolve with forced upstream shut-ins

still wild that crude on water rose by ~250 million barrels between end-August and end-November that's a truly gobsmacking ~2.8 MMbpd in a fundamentally stronger market, that kind of lagged displacement between production and supply would have left the world in a serious lurch

an ounce of humility is all I'm asking

Did Beijing write this? Link: www.ft.com/content/42ab...

gm, Brent < $61

The buildup of sanctioned oil on water really got going in the latter half of the year, just as China's SPR building spree started to die down. The latter has been an important driver of the former.

My favourite thing about the engagement with this tweet is that it's very obviously three different jokes to different groups: Oil folks: referring to tanker volume in liters rather than barrels Americans: referring to anything in liters Non-Americans: you spelled litres wrong

it's like you don't even know me

Most US commercial petroleum inventories are very low right now. And then there's NGLs.

when everyone on the timeline is shifting toward oil bullishness because the price decline already represents peak despair… … but we haven’t yet actually flipped into prompt contango

“Liters”

The upside of being a parent of many tiny, plague-bearing humans is that it has really de-risked “floor germs” in relative terms.