Oil prices for August have plunged by almost half, and now sit just above $50 per barrel, but you’re probably not surprised.
The main reason for that decline is a sharp drop in global oil demand.
And while global oil production is now down, the world is still importing oil at a rate of about 2.7 million barrels per day.
That’s down from 3.3 million barrels a day just two months ago.
And the reason why oil is down is that the US is now producing less oil than it’s ever had.
US oil production last month was 1.86 million barrels, down slightly from 1.9 million barrels in May.
That is a drop of about 5 percent from May.
It also means that the world’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, is now making up the shortfall, at least temporarily.
The decline in demand has been going on for a long time.
US crude oil production has been declining for at least 15 years, and since 2007 the world has been consuming less oil.
But that is a different story altogether.
US production peaked in 2014 and has been slowly declining ever since.
In fact, in the first quarter of 2018, US production was down 5.3 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.
And in 2019, it fell even further.
So in short, US oil consumption is down, not because of the US economy, but because of a dramatic reduction in demand.
If you think about it, this is the same trend we’ve seen for the last 15 years or so.
US production is down because of supply disruptions, but it’s down because the US government has been cutting back on domestic production, leaving its domestic oil industry largely unfilled.
That means the US oil industry has been in a downward spiral, which has been exacerbated by an aggressive push by US energy companies to drill and exploit the vast shale gas deposits that lie under the ground in North America.
That shale gas is now being tapped by some of the world-leading energy companies, including Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP.
So the US has now become the world leader in the oil and gas sector.
And the rest of the planet is seeing the same thing.
But if you think the world just got a little more energy efficient, well, not quite.
The big story from the last couple of weeks is that China is now getting a lot more energy efficiency.
China now produces about 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources, and its overall energy consumption is now at its lowest level since the mid-1980s.
That decline has been happening for years, but the latest data shows that it’s getting worse.
What does this mean for the rest to come?
Well, that’s what we’ll talk about next.
(This article was updated on August 10 at 4:50pm PT to include an analysis of the latest OPEC data from Bloomberg Intelligence.
It also contains additional information about how much oil prices have dropped and why.)