The oil market is complex and so many other parameters either feed into it or depend on it, quite impossible to predict in the short to medium term. There is far less storage capacity than consumption, so gluts or acute, perceived shortages are both easy to emerge or be created. As we have seen, it is volatile, with wide swings up or down. May as well spin the roulette wheel. Which is why there are so many speculators. Why do real work when you can manipulate and cream off 'just a teeny weeny bit' off the top? Would be more stable if the market were just consumers and producers. LONG term, there are more parameters that are predictable. The most important of which is that the world is moving away from fossil fuels faster than most anticipated or predicted. The long term price of oil will be set by the cost of the alternatives per unit of equivalent energy. Solar, for instance, has fallen fast in terms of cost, if not convenience or reliability. Saudis once rode camels. They will do so again. Just hope I live long enough to hear it. Will never see it as will never actually go there...Not ONE mention anywhere  of the fact that the world economy is in complete free fall. Nobody is buying oil. Demand has crashed through the floor because the entire world economy is crap and has been crap for the entire 8 years of the Obama Administration. Of course, its not really his fault because this ship's course was set long before he became president, but when he got in, they had already disconnected the controls over the economy's throttle on high and he had no way to stop it, so, he piled on. But we've never had a recover since the 2008 crash. The economy world wide has been in a hidden depression papered over with fiat currency by irresponsible central banks because if they allowed everyone to see how bad things actually were, it would make the politicians look like idiots.... of course, they ARE idiots, but they don't want people to know that or they won't vote for them.  Oil prices are plummeting because the fake economy could only prop up the fake recover for so long before the bottom fell out. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Brent Crude go below 15 dollars a barrel this year. Maybe even below 10 dollars a barrel.

When oil prices crashes and Saudi and Middle East become bankrupt, there will a tsunami of Muslims making a beeline for Europe. Some Middle East countries have the highest birth rates in the world with an average women in Yemen having between 8 to 10 children. The chronic water shortage in the Middle East will further accelerate the exodus into Europe.  Human right activists will ensure that Europe takes in most of the asylum seekers that land on the shores of Europe. On legalistic and humanitarian grounds , and with compassionate leaders like Merkel, Europe will be arm twisted to oblige.  Expect a historical change in European demographics and culture. High likelihood that some European countries will be Muslim majority in 50 years. This includes Sweden, Denmark and Belgium. With Angela Merkel's open door policy of a million asylum seekers per year, Germany may also become Muslim majority.  Culturally it will mean that women will be conservatively dressed, alcohol forbidden in places, halal food becoming ubiquitous, and the muezzin sounding across the continent...Problem with Saudi Arabia is that the local work force is lazy and unproductive, and suffer from the entitlement syndrome. The civil service is over staffed . More emphasis on religious obligations rather than focussing on the job. Many of the graduates have degrees in Islamic theology and are not suited for a modern work force. Most of the work is done by migrant labour from Asia that is under paid and over worked.  Similar to other Muslim countries like in the Gulf and also another oil exporting Muslim country in South East Asia called Malaysia.

We must decide whether the European Union is worth saving

The present EU is an enfeebled and retarded offspring of the 3rd Reich, but one can still see the DNA traits and family similarities. Like its grand-daddy, this Reich has the Southern countries beholden to Germany as near colonies, it has pan-European rule from an ideological and corrupt bureaucratic center, and above all, a German leader is pursuing a massive utopian, so-called progressive, racial, social engineering scheme, which is being forced down the throats of both Germans and Europeans, which all will eventually lead Europe into an abyss...If the EU is doomed to deflationary underachievement thanks to its structural incoherence, then we are confronted with a land of the living dead in which existence is punctuated only by volcanic eruptions. This does not seem like the worst is over at all....EU = Eternal Uncertainty. When is that simple message going to be articulated? Membership of the Common Market, correction EEC, correction EU has been one long, non-stop wrangle with Brussels, its agenda-driven, calculating jobs worth's and apparatchiks moving the goal posts year-on-year. How can anyone view that as the norm for a  healthy accountable democracy?  The EU is a corrupt concept - through and through - based on the two main losers of WW2 forcing the rest of the continent into an economic and political straitjacket so as to maintain a semblance of peaceful co-existence between themselves.

More than 52,000 refugees and migrants crossed the eastern Mediterranean to reach Europe in the first four weeks of January, more than 35 times as many as attempted the crossing in the same period last year.  The daily average number of people making the crossing is nearly equivalent to the total number for the whole month of January as recently as two years ago, according to the International Organisation for Migration.  More than 250 people have died attempting to make the crossing this month, including at least 39 who drowned in the Aegean Sea on Saturday morning after their boat capsized between Turkey and Greece.  Turkish coastguards rescued 75 others from the sea near the resort of Ayvacik on Saturday, according to the Anadolou news agency. They had been trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.  The eastern route into Europe, via Greece, has overtaken the previously popular central Mediterranean route from north Africa over the past year. Refugees have continued to use the route all winter, despite rough seas and strong winds.“An estimated 52,055 migrants and refugees have arrived in the Greek islands since the beginning of the year,” the IOM said. “This is close to the total recorded in the relatively safe month of July 2015, when warm weather and calm seas allowed 54,899 to make the journey.”Turkey, which is hosting at least 2.5 million refugees from the civil war in neighbouring Syria, has become the main launchpad for migrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty. Ankara struck a deal with the EU in November to halt the flow of refugees, in return for €3bn (£2.3bn) in financial assistance to help improve the refugees’ conditions.

The UN’s office for human rights has said refugee minors in Bangui, in the Central African Republic (CAR), have accused EU flag-wearing soldiers of sexual abuse. Two local girls, aged 14 to 16, said they were raped by peacekeepers in the Eufor-CAR mission. Two others, in the same age group, said they were paid for sex. Three of the four girls said the soldiers were from Georgia, which contributed 140 members to the EU’s 700-strong operation. Refugee children also accused French soldiers in the Sangaris operation, a unilateral mission. A seven-year old girl said she performed oral sex on a French soldier in return for a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits. A nine-year old boy said he, and several others, were abused. Children also accused UN peacekeepers. The UN assistant secretary general, Anthony Banbury, said on Friday (29 January) he knows of four new cases in Bangui. He said there were 22 UN cases in Central Africa last year, and 69 in total in the UN’s 16 missions around the world. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said, also on Friday, she alerted the EU, Georgia, and France on 19 January. She said she was “heartened” by their reaction. But she added: “Far too many of these crimes continue to go unpunished, with the perpetrators enjoying full impunity. This simply encourages further violations.” Banbury told press in New York: “It’s hard to imagine the outrage that people working for the United Nations in the causes of peace and security feel when these kinds of allegations come to light.” The Guardian, a British daily, said he was close to tears. For its part, the EU foreign service said it has “a zero-tolerance policy as regards sexual misconduct or criminal activity.” But it added that “responsibility for any investigation, disciplinary or criminal action remains in the hands of the contributing states.”  The Georgian defence ministry said: “In case such grave crimes are proven, perpetrators … will be brought to justice.” France made similar promises.  The EU sent Eufor-CAR to Central Africa in April 2014 to protect refugees in a brutal civil war. It pulled out in March 2015. Troops mostly came from EU states Estonia, Finland, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain.  Georgia, an EU and Nato-aspirant state, sometimes takes part in EU operations.

The current economy in the first world is a house of cards. It's a huge ensemble of jokers (- representing our top-heavy, too-big-to-fail service-based industry), resting outdoors, precariously, on top of a cheap and unsteady ladder (- representing the globalised primary and secondary industry)... And the winds are picking up, and the rains are gaining strength.  And yet we're told that - if we only add some more cards, or some more jokers to the pack in the form of mortgages or personalised debt - everything will be OK. We're so focused on the house of cards, that we cannot see our very precarious position, up the global ladder, in the wind and rain.  There is only one way our house of cards service sector economy is going: Down. How can it possibly account for more than 75% of our economy, and continue to be funded by a supply of endless bad debt and cheap non-renewable energy and goods?  Gravity will win. Our mainstream politicians and media have effectively become gravity-deniers. They are all mature; old and spent; close to retirement and the economy in Europe, US, and Japan is in much the same state, as the OECD are fully aware and outlining albeit in technocratic bullshit terms.  We are living in a system of neo-colonialism and neo-corportism which the first-world states have to partly or wholly subsidise and collude with each other in order to maintain. We say it's the 'free market' but it's more of a fascist market, once you get out of the shallow end.

Inflation is finally showing signs of returning to the eurozone after figures from January suggested consumer prices had risen to their highest level since October 2014. Headline inflation in the 19-country bloc rose to 0.4pc at the start of the year, according to a flash estimate from Eurostat, up from 0.2pc in December. More encouragingly for Europe's policymakers, core inflation - which strips out the impact of volatile elements such as energy - also inched up to 1pc from 0.9pc at the end of 2015. Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics, called the slowdown “a temporary blip” and would likely rebound next quarter. Next Friday the Labor Department will release its latest jobs report and the US is expected to have added another 210,000 in January. “People love doom and gloom. We had this the same time last year,” said Ashworth. “But GDP grew 2.4% last year and 2.4% the year before, that’s pretty good. It’s been enough to drive the unemployment rate down to 5% from 10% [at the peak of the recession].”A boost this year is expected to come mainly from consumer spending, which typically fuels about two-thirds of economic activity. Continued solid job growth could embolden consumers to spend more. Personal consumption accounts for more than two-thirds of GDP and rose 2.2% in the fourth quarter, down from 3% in the third quarter. The Federal Reserve issued a cautious assessment of the economy this week, leaving interest rates unchanged after raising its benchmark short-term rate in December from record lows.