Britannia Radio

Markets & Manipulation: A long History
 
Most markets these days are manipulated to some extent, and this is nothing new if we look back through the history of financial markets. 

But there are some strange things happening right now in the oil market worth mentioning.
 
 
Brent-WTI Spread/Scam
 
Another scam in the Oil market is the Brent-WTI spread this has been one of the biggest scams over the years in the Oil market. 

Just to provide some data to the absurdity which is this much hyped about nonsensical spread Cushing Oklahoma has 49.7 million barrels in storage, it had 45.1 million barrels in storage a year ago. 

 Cushing had 50 million barrels in storage at the start of the year.

Moreover, in June Cushing will be adding additional supplies to storage due to current pipeline capacity going offline. 

So for all this talk about pipelines finally unlocking all the glut of oil supplies from the Cushing hub, and this being the reason for the impressive reduction in the Brent-WTI spread it is just a bunch of nonsense. 
 
Cushing Oklahoma Supply 
Glut
 
So there is basically more oil trapped in Cushing Oklahoma then there has ever been when the spread was 25! So regardless if the spread is 25 or 8 it has very little to do with supplies residing in Cushing 
Oklahoma that is quite evident. 

Now there are a bunch of factors contributing to the nuances of the spread which I will not go into detail here but the takeaway is just to point out the absurdity which is the false and misleading rhetoric 
that encompasses this spread and Cushing Inventory levels.  

 
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-21/oil-market-manipulation-reaches-absurd-levels