With WTI At $45, One Wonders If Saudi Has Made Another Trillion-Dollar Mistake -- May 4, 2017

We now have proof (which most of us suspected) that Saudi may have cut production but they more than made up for their cut in production by exporting oil in their storage -- my hunch is that Saudi was literally running out of storage and thought it clever to agree to a cut (which was pretty minimal to begin with) and then make up for the production cut by exporting oil out of storage.

By the way, speaking of Saudi Arabia, we now learn that the Saudi "government" will control the business operations of the Aramco IPO. It might not have been stated as such but however it's phrased, the result is the same. In the big scheme of things it probably doesn't matter but just the same ....

Idle chatter.

Shortly after posting the above, which was really posted for no reason at all, this blurb popped up over at CNBC: Plunging oil prices show OPEC has lost its grip on the market.

Compliance to the cuts "is as good as it's going to get for them, and it's still not working," said one trader.

The trader has it all wrong:

• the cuts were minimal to begin with;
• the actual production data is known only to the Saudis themselves; we have no idea if they have cut production; our data is based on their reports;
• it was shown that Saudi is exporting more oil to the US than before the announced cuts (32% more, in fact)
• it is now known that the Saudis more than made up for any cut in production by releasing oil from overflowing oil storage depots

For Saudi, truly, another trillion-dollar mistake.

That Saudi oil cut? It was only make believe:

It's Only Make Believe, Conway Twitty
I tried finding someone else doing a cover of this song, but only Conway Twitty can do it. It was his first million-sales album.