There was a time where Iran was supposed to be an importer of oil by now for their energy needs... lol, horizontal drills must be giving them plenty or perhaps its the nuclear power plants... just another reason to believe one day the world will be very short on oil available for recovery... world demand will be way short of production... we are using it up fast this way... but how long all depends on just how many wells are drilled to hold leases (as most USA/Texas leases from lawyers) require production (limited shut-in time (so just drilling to hold the lease will not work without production but no mention of max production allowed by TX Railroad Commission)...
They haven't even started tapping oil reserves (shale) in Asia from article a couple of years ago but since oil hadn't dropped that much they may have leased (so will they add to the glut and drill/produce to keep the lease and not pay again to lease them when prices rebound? These world producers need to eject OPEC and any other and work through the UN on production limits based on proved reserves and world demand (maybe that could be done)?
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of March 1, 2016. Change is week-over-week.
Crude oil: Apparently, key OPEC members are meeting with non-OPEC oil producers on March 20th for talks on output freeze plan. Hopes are high. And this is what is driving price action right now.
Spot West Texas Intermediate crude broke out of $34-$34.50 resistance on Friday, joining XLE, the SPDR energy ETF, which broke out of resistance at $58.50 on Wednesday.
Right at this moment, market participants do not seem all that focused on other data.
U.S. crude supply continued to build. In the week ended February 26th, inventory rose by another 10.4 million barrels to a new record 518 million barrels. Supply has gone up by nearly 36 million barrels in the past eight weeks!
Despite this domestic supply, crude imports rose by 490,000 barrels per day to 8.3 million barrels per day – an 11-week high.
Distillate stocks rose as well, by 2.9 million barrels to 163.6 million barrels – a six-week high.
Gasoline stocks, however, fell… by 1.5 million barrels to 255 million barrels. Two weeks ago (258.7 million barrels), stocks were at a record.
Production fell, too – by 25,000 bpd to 9.08 mb/d. This was a sixth straight weekly drop. Production reached a record 9.61 mb/d in the June 5th (2015) week.
Also, refinery utilization rose a percentage point to 88.3. Utilization peaked at 96.1 percent in the August 7th (2015) week.
Last week saw the largest week-over-week increase in non-commercials’ net longs since October 2010. This week, they added more.
Besides the afore-mentioned breakout, the good thing is that the 50-day moving average is beginning to flatten out on WTI. A base is building.
A lot now depends on what comes out of the March 20th meeting. Suppose the talks fail and oil continues to rally? That would validate the breakout.
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