Saudi Arabia's 2nd Trillion-Dollar Mistake -- Playing a Shell Game -- May 5, 2017

The stories now coming out: OPEC likely to extend production cuts but won't make the cuts deeper.

The initial cuts were minimal in the big scheme of things, and as we've seen, were easily made up by US shale and US Gulf of Mexico.

But now we learn that Saudi Arabia, and probably some/many/most of the others, have been playing a shell game. Saudi Arabia cut production (wink, wink) but more than made up for those cuts (wink, wink) by taking oil out of storage. In the process they actually increased exports to the US by 32% in February, 2017.

A 32% increase in Saudi imports for the US in one month is incredible (February, 2017, compared to February, 2016).