Lifting at a rig Millions of barrels of excess crude oil are weighing down tankers that are being filled from pipelines coming from fields where rows of overworked pump jacks are bobbing their heads up and down like spooked horses. Oil markets are spooked again too. In the absence of output restraint – a return to some sense of prudent resource management by the world’s largest state-owned producers – oil prices could submerge below the industry’s $40/B Plimsoll line for the second time this year. It should come as no surprise that the glut is largely being produced out of the Middle East, where this mother of all price battles began over two years ago. Year over year, up to the end of the third quarter of 2016, output from the oil-rich region is up by almost 2.0 MMB/day (see Figure 1). Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq have been […]