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Little else makes sense in these oil price drops other than lack of demand

I don't think so.

Oil / fuel demand hasn't dropped. What's changed, is the supply of crude oil. There's simply a LOT more of it on the market, due to the American revolution in fracking.

Because there's more oil available, and the Mideast oil producing nations have refused to lower their production, the end point price for fuel is dropping at the pump.

There's nothing more mysterious here than the law of supply and demand.

This is geo-economics at work.

The Saudis (and the other oil producing nations in the middle east) have so much wealth, that they can afford to absorb the hit from low oil prices in the short term. They're betting that they can drive the price down so low, that it will become too costly for us to extract our own oil through fracking - which will then send us right back to them as a prime customer.