RE: Rather feeble drawdown for oil -The key number is total drawdown of Petroleum stocks. 4.4 M down again. Last year up 2 M. In FACT (and I know you like FACTS tinman) from Jun 5 to Aug 28 of 2008 - Petroleum stocks increased by 24.5m bbls. From Jun 6 to Aug 29 of 2009, the stocks increased by less than 1M bbls. Look back at the same period in 2007 (increase of 20.7M bbls), 2006 (40.8 M bbls). 2005 (33M bbls), 2004 (42M bbls). So you can see that the drawdown in etroleum stocks in the summer of 2009 was extraordinaily high (20-40X greater than in any of the previous 5 years). I would have thought that you learned from Natural Gas that you don't look at where the stocks are to predict forward price, but rather where stocks are going.
The BP Discovery is 34K feet deep. Not economical at $90 - it could come on stream 2 years from now earliest - impact on the price of oil futures=0. The media looks at results and tries to identify causes, when in fact the cause is simple (fear of the unknown).
The recession is over. The market is correcting because people guess that it should correct. We've had a week of nice weather so it should rain tommorrow, right. Guessers work that way. A smart person might use more than that to determine what the weather will be like - looking at the meteorlogical indicators and the forecast for example ( wow - even though it has been nice heare for a 5 day streak, it is stil going to be nice tomorrow).
All fundamentals are improving, and Sept Job numbers will beat expectations. That will be the final signal and the market and Oil will take take an incremental step forward.