Oil prices have continued to languish below $50 per barrel as a glut of crude oil and gasoline persist even as global demand continues to rise. The IEA still predicts that oil consumption will expand by another 1.4 million barrels per day in 2016, while production stagnates. That dynamic suggests that the market is converging towards some sort of balance, although the speed with which that takes place is hotly debated. But in the short-term the record levels of crude oil and refined products sitting in storage have prevented oil prices from rebounding. The U.S. had 525 million barrels of crude oil inventories at the end of August and 232 million barrels of gasoline . Both figures are sharply higher than the running five-year average and higher than even year-ago levels. And inventories are only down slightly from their peaks hit earlier this year. Until oil and refined product […]