What Actually Moves Oil Prices

Oil price is a balance of flows and stocks. Supply comes from OPEC policy, US shale economics, and geopolitics that turns barrels off without warning. Demand runs with world GDP, driving seasons, and weather.

Inventories are the scoreboard: when stocks build, price falls, when they drain, price rises, which is why weekly storage data moves markets. The curve shape adds expectations, and the dollar denominates everything. Beyond fundamentals, positioning matters, since crowded trades squeeze and unwind violently.

No single hand controls the price, not even the cartel, as shale proved when high prices drilled themselves into gluts twice in a decade..