Oil has entered a bear market as fears of an economic downturn mount. The fundamentals look much tighter than the swoon might suggest, but the supply and demand picture is also beginning to look more negative. The EIA report was exceptionally weak , showing a strong build in crude oil (+6.8 million barrels), gasoline (+3.2 million barrels) and distillates (+4.6 million barrels). The combined builds across multiple products surprised the market. Sometimes, these figures sort of offset each other. For instance, if refiners are running really hard, they tend to build up gasoline stocks, but they use up crude oil in the process, so crude inventories dip even as gasoline stocks rise. This time around there was none of that. Increases across the board led to a plunge in oil prices. “Oil has a Lehman Brothers moment,” is how Standard Chartered described it. The investment bank puts out its […]