A common refrain one hears these days from market bulls and reads in long-term analyses is that by 2020, the current glut in supply and decline in prices will be reversed: that the current drought in exploration and capital investment in new production will send available supply plummeting, with a complimentary spike in prices. This was the prediction of a recent IEA report , which guessed that oil prices would reach $70 by 2020. Whether this reversal in the market occurs or not will depend in large part on global demand. In the United States, around 40 percent of crude is refined into motor fuel and gasoline, to feed the American people’s favorite gas-guzzlers. Crude prices picked up this week, rising above $50 thanks to signs that U.S. demand for refined products is strengthening. Higher-than-expected inventory drops, together with outages in Libya, pushed the oil price up. But can […]