I work at a refinery & we're full to overflowing.
That why prices are down & need to come down a lot more.
Every tank in every tank farm is bursting with product looking desperatly for a market right now like an old man with a prostate problem looking for a urinal.
Thanks for keeping us from relying on the opinion pieces of 'news journalists.'
All they would have to do to lose it is drop the price...
Your are correct. The economy is slowing down, natural gas is once again the preferred boiler fuel and OPEC is cheating on quotas. What a short term oversupply doesn't translate to is an indication of anything long term.
To give some idea, the last estimate I heard of the impact of the collapse of oil prices to around 10 dollars was the permanent loss of about 1 million barells per day from marginal production in the US that could have continued for years, but was totally uneconomic at lower prices. When this type of production gets plugged and abandonned, it is a very good bet that it will never be brought back into production.
Low prices lead to lower production which leads to high prices. The key point however is that either way the low cost producers like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States increase market share.
BTW, the difference between optimal supplies of crude and products; and current supplies is a lot of oil, but is really only a few days worth of consumption.