Energy OverView August 12, 2013

Crude oil futures rallied, in a sizeable way, on Friday. Once again, on Friday and again this morning, production outages are lending support to the bull case. The most recent data series out of China is also contributing to the strength. As we noted, last week, crude oil imports there rose to a record and other media trumpeted our notice of China moving in on the top spot, in terms of global crude oil importer. Implied crude oil demand was down, slightly, but all the other measures, such industrial production and GDP, allayed the recent fears over of a Sino slowdown.