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The price of Crude Oil is an indication of how the world economy is performing. Many news reports see the oil price rise as an indication of economic recovery, others are more cautious.
 On the 5th of May, The Telegraph reported oil inventories are completely full:
Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port, is running out of room for more oil, US reserves are at a 19-year record and tankers are being used as floating storage off Britain's south coast, even though OPEC is reducing production. "From a commodities point of view, world trade is appalling and the demand is just not there," said Ahmad Abdallah, commodities analyst at Gavekal, the economics consultancy. "All inventories are rising – they are bursting at their seams."
Wall Street Journal reports [May 12] : Norway, the world’s fourth biggest crude exporter, said Monday that its oil production fell a sizeable 7% in April to 1.99 million barrels a day last month from 2.15 million barrels a day in March. Though preliminary, the data highlight one of the big underlying supply problems in non-OPEC states that many oil analysts believe is likely to send crude prices back over the $100 a barrel mark in coming years.
Bloomberg reports: Oil rose for a second day after an industry group reported U.S. crude stockpiles dropped for the second week in a row and the dollar declined. [..] “With more data out today, there is now a hope they will also show inventories are no longer increasing,” said Sintje Diek, an analyst at HSH Nordbank in Hamburg. “People are expecting that oil demand will be stronger again and everything will recover.”
The Financial Times confirms the beliefs of an early economic recovery: US crude oil prices hit the $60 a barrel level on Tuesday for the first time since November while trade data from China helped push base metals higher as commodity markets continued to gain support from hopes for an early recovery for the global economy.
Reuters follows as well: Oil rose toward $60 a barrel on Wednesday, after hitting a six-month high the previous day, after U.S. inventory data showed an unexpected drawdown, boosting hopes for recovery in the world's top energy user.
In the meantime, the Chinese economy is in the lift again, according to Bloomberg: China’s crude-oil processing volume rose a second month in April after increased car sales and the planting season boosted demand for gasoline and diesel, according to government data.
In contrast, BusinessWeek gives an interesting other perspective: Financial Times’ Chris Flood delivers it straight: Prices are rising because of various types of trading gambles. Flood quotes Mike Wittner, a senior oil analyst at Société Générale saying the following: “Recent price strength is not based on fundamentals, but on financial flows.”
[..] up to 3 million barrels a day of oil is being bought purely for storage, including on the sea. But he predicts that such purchases – which help to prop up prices – will decline because storage is becoming harder and harder to find; when they do, Likvern says, prices will fall substantially.
Later today, May 13, MarketWatch reported:
Crude-oil futures gave up gains Wednesday as investors looked past a surprising decline in last week's U.S. crude inventories and focused instead on weak demand and lower refinery production levels. The decline in crude inventories was not driven by higher demand but by lower imports, Energy Information Administration data showed.
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