An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Mark Lewis (links in original): Oil market commentators increasingly dismiss the very idea of supply-side constraints on the oil market, pointing to the recent surge in light-tight oil production from US shale deposits and the existence of vast shale formations elsewhere in the world…. But does this peak demand theory bear scrutiny? [F]rom data for 2013 released by the EIA recently, it is now clear that US demand not only increased last year, but accelerated rapidly over the course of the year. All of [the data reported by the author] implies that the reduction in US oil demand over 2008-12 was not so much structural as due mainly to the weakness of the US economy following the global financial crisis, and the tightness of the local oil market until recently. As the economy has started […]