I'm just quoting (cut and pasting) what I read. Call it whatever you want. It would seem to be an opportunity for temporal disintermediation to the extent that the price difference was above the combined cost of storage and the cost of money.
How? If in contango, futures prices for a given maturity date are falling. In normal backwardation, futures are rising.
Wouldn’t that be buying high and selling low? Maybe Thackney can explain it.
I visit this site regularly and they’ve been discussing it this week: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_top.asp