silhouette industrial oil pump jack and falling oil graph on the blue globe background with the word oil price, oil price falling crisis concept Getty While I was cooking dinner for Christmas Eve (my Yorkshire pudding came out this year; previously I was famous for what the family dubbed Yorkshire Pancakes), I kept one eye on the oil price reports. With both equity and commodity markets crashing, oil prices followed suit. Christmas cheer for consumers, but lumps of coal (and not the good kind) for producers, who didn’t deserve it. Although to quote Clint Eastwood, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” (Different context, admittedly.) Needless to say, this is scary stuff for the industry, many of whom are seeing barrels of red ink (think oil sands in Canada very definitely). But it’s vital to realize this is a commodity price fluctuation more than a change in the oil market fundamentals. True, as 2018 evolved, expectations of $100 a barrel next year receded, especially as it became clear that economic prospects were dimming and U.S. shale production was soaring. Think Christmas movies. No, not the catastrophic explosions in Die Hard, but the iconic traders’ movie Trading Places, where commodity […]
