Crude Sign of The Times

The world has found the ceiling where demand destruction kicks into high gear.  It’s when a barrel of oil reaches about $125 – $135.   

You can see the signs of demand destruction everywhere – in economic reports, quarterly conference calls, even from the oil shipping companies.   There is now an abundance of oil supply, so much so that oil tankers are being docked because they have no place to deliver their cargo.  From Bloomberg…

Supertanker owners are leaving more ships at anchor after rising fuel costs and the biggest weekly slump in hire rates for at least a decade made it less attractive to deliver cargoes.

The reason there’s an overabundance of supply is because demand is falling rapidly.  Worldwide growth hit a wall in May because of high energy costs.  Almost every retailer and financial transaction company in the US noted it on their conference call this quarter.  Even General Motors threw in the towel on its Hummer division in May.  The pain to own one is just too great.  The demand for Hummers is nil.  A helpful shopping comparison from Carmax.com indicates that you can now buy a Hummer H3 for less than a Honda Civic. 

All this indicates that crude oil is not done going down.  The top is in and it will be a while before oil revisits the mid $150s because the world stops spinning when it gets close to that price.