TheUBend on capitalstool.com: “re the crude oil thing..anecdotally, spans (which are inquiries for bunkers - the fuel oil for ships ) are an excellent insight into the insiders view of energy prices. A week before the current snapback in crude, spans in Fujairah (gulf ) and Singapore ( centre of the biggest freight demand - far east ) fell back. Well here’s the new one. Spans are picking up sharply again. And for good reason; we are about to enter the period when fixtures are made for the winter season, and demand ALWAYS increases.. Again, purely anecdotally, the tanker community ( and I know a couple of the big Greek tanker operators ) for them $50 crude in the short term is yesterday’s news.

The laughable thing is the way that the weaker ( highly leveraged ) specs are shaken out by news from a mosque in Iraq. So I’ll regurgitate what the CFO of one of the world’s biggest tanker operators told me last week - “keep your eye on the big picture”.”