Thursday Late Night Notes: Part I -- Bloomberg's Take On OPEC -- June 11, 2015

This is really, really cool. I have written these three words for quite some time now, most recently on June 6, 2015: OPEC is dead.

Now, I see Citi is suggesting the same but waffling? Bloomberg is reporting:

Not that long ago, it used to be that oil traders and energy giants hung on OPEC's every word. Now we have Citigroup's global head of commodities research asking if it's time to write the group's obituary.

Granted, the headline and the article pretty much says it, but Forbes with the very same story would have had the headline: OPEC is dead.

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Wow! The Change From One Year Ago Is Staggering

Updates

June 12, 2015: I have a deep concern. No one questioned me on the "original post" below. I posted the "original post" on June 11, 2015, suggesting that the difference between this week's data and the data one year ago was staggering. I was being facetious. The difference is significant but not enough to be concurrent with the price of oil going from $100 to $50 per bbl. For me, a difference between 24 days and 29 days in the number of days of crude storage is inconsequential. And the trend is down.

Original Post

This is the number of days of stocks of crude oil in the United States. Look at the staggering difference in the most recent reporting period (as of June 6, 2015) and then comparing it to one year ago.

• most recently: 24.4 days supply of crude oil for the United States
• one year ago: 28.7 days

Staggering.

By the way, when I first started blogging, eight years ago or thereabouts, the number of days of crude oil stocks was about 22 days if I recall correctly.

Source. Also note the graph at that link; it's pretty striking but a drop from 490 million bbls to 470 million bbls doesn't amount to a hill of beans.