Sorry, but for you, oil trades at $250 a barrel

  • Date: 10-May-2022
  • Source: Energy Voice
  • Sector:Oil & Gas
  • Country:Gulf
  • Who else needs to know?

Sorry, but for you, oil trades at $250 a barrel

If you are the owner of an oil refinery, then crude is trading happily just a little above $110 a barrel — expensive, but not extortionate. If you aren’t an oil baron, I have bad news: it’s as if oil is trading somewhere between $150 and $275 a barrel.

The oil market is projecting a false sense of stability when it comes to energy inflation. Instead, the real economy is suffering a much stronger price shock than it appears, because fuel prices are rising much faster than crude, and that matters for monetary policy.

To understand why, let’s examine the guts of the oil market: the refining industry.