Dreadymatt

Good analysis - I know i was worried it might trigger some kind of last-bout-of-property-mania before the big crash, which I personally envisage occuring in 2016 (rising interest rates, removal of CGT for no-residental owners, and simple realisation of the massive elephant in the room - insanely inflated property prices that nobody can truely afford)

i must admit i really like it

...i think the confusion here is one is referring to "barrels per day" and the other total barrels

Quite a lot of people don't think prices can fall that much further as that would mean prices below the marginal cost curve - but (a) prices can fall below this no problem (at least in the short term), and ( the marginal barrel of oil changes as demand contracts (i.e. it stops being that expensive to refine Canadian tar sands and becomes more easily extractable Middle Eastern oil (hence the marginal cost falls), plus © in a global recession costs (such as engineering and steel costs) also fall, further diminishing the marginal cost. ...so yes prices can certainly fall quite a bit further, $30 by end 2009 is my call

i work in the oil industry and believe me lots of oil is still economic at $20. Plus OPEC can't realistically cut production much more than it already has done. I don't think oil will fall to $20 anytime soon, but it could easily fall to $40 - demand growth is a distance prospect (despite the optimisitc tones of the IEA recently - a subset of the OECD) and people tend to forget that $100 oil is only a very recent development (that seriously none of us ever thought would happen just 3 or 4 years ago) ....but then predicting such things is an almost impossible science

I noticed that the Chinese GDP number essentially equates to 7.1% year-on-year growth in the first half of the year, but of this 6.2 percentage points came from investment, 3.8 percentage point from consumption and VERY WORRYINGLY negative 2.9 percentage point from net exports - so the recovery is not long term sustainable (they are essentially betting on things turning round globally (which i don't think they will in 2010). Yes China will probably achieve near-8% economuc growth in 2009 - as it pumps massive waves of government cash into the economy - but I can't see this lasting if net exports remain net deductive in 2010. A serious double-dip awaits, we are in this recession for the long haul and any talk of green-shoots is massively premature in my opinion