The global oil cushion isn’t really hitting ‘tank bottoms’

THE energy industry’s latest panic is that it is about to hit “tank bottoms”: the minimum amount of crude in storage required to keep the conveyor belt that goes from oilfields to refineries humming.

As with every financial narrative, the story of the impending oil crisis contains a grain of truth – and ample hogwash.

Undeniably, the world has depleted a large chunk of its crude inventories over the last 150-plus days of oscillating war and peace.