Oil commentary - 12 August 2021

Morning all.?Thursday.?Brent is trading this morning at $71.26 down 0.18 and WTi is trading down 0.20 at $69.05.?When accepting the Turner prize in 1995 Damien Hirst said, "It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art, twisted imagination and a chainsaw".?Well Damo, it's amazing what the bulls in this oil market can do because trust me, at the moment they are armed with more than a chainsaw.?Yesterday was quite extraordinary, not in terms of volatility - that's a given seeing as we are smack bang in the middle of sandy ice cream season - I'm talking about the market’s ability to ignore just about every bearish headline and focus on nothing apart from sentiment, yeah ignore the facts, move on and buy it will you, just bloomin' buy it.?What do you speak of Stanley??I shall tell you.?Yesterday morning, Goldman Sachs, (thems of the most bullish persuasion) said that Chinese oil demand is expected to be around 1 million bpd lower than expected over the next two months.?Now, I don't know about you, but I heard a rumour that demand was supposed to make a roaring come back during the second half of this year??No??Ah, must just be me then, I must wash my ears out.?OK so that was that.?Then we heard that The White House is calling on OPEC+ to boost production to combat climbing end user product prices.?Let us not forget that the recovery in crude oil this year (some 45pct no less) has been good for oil producing nations but the rise in gasoline prices has been even steeper with surging gasoline refining margins.?Not good for the recovery and not good for the inflation argument.?Oil reacted to this news badly, as it should, and we traded down to $69.10 on Brent.?Then it was as if that news didn't really matter, Chinese demand falling is purely "transitory" and Biden's call to OPEC+ wouldn't amount to much.?Then EIA data came in and showed a flat set of numbers across the board and we ended up closing at $71.72.?A $2.62 rally on the back of negative news.?Do I think anything will actually come of the call to OPEC+ yesterday from across the pond??Well, in the words of Saudi Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz, why don't YOU just "drill baby drill" President Biden??Oh, hiiii Greta!?I thought you might get involved in this one.?Let's wait and see what happens.?Happy Islamic New Year to all those celebrating.?Good day.