Traders laughed off the International Energy Agency’s "no change in demand forecast" because it is clear to all non-biased readers that demand is going to grow in the next year. Their prediction of so-called "explosive” shale oil production growth is also being brought into question. For a major reporting agency using hyperbole like the word "explosive" seems like a desperate attempt to get attention and try to get attention to support the position of the consuming countries that they represent. We know that demand is strong and we are seeing it week after week.

It’s been a relatively slow start to what is otherwise likely to be a busy week for the markets, with appearances from prominent central bankers being accompanied by numerous data releases.

Crude oil prices are getting geared up for the OPEC/Non-OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria. At this meeting it is widely expected that the players involved will extend cuts throughout the rest of next year, despite some lingering geo-political and shale oil concerns. This meeting comes as oil prices pull back from a two-and-a-half-year high and global supply is tightening.

Oil prices surged even before the American Petroleum Report (API) reported another massive crude oil crude withdrawal. The 10.23-million-barrel draw, if confirmed by the Energy Information Administration, it means that U.S. oil supply is down almost 55 million barrels since the end of March, even as the Strategic Petroleum Resave added over 13 million of barrels of oil into the marketplace. The API brings the total inventory for crude oil in 2017 to a net draw of 7.534 million barrels, the first net draw for 2017 since January according to Oilprice. So we see that OPEC and non-OPEC cuts do matter. As I told Marketwatch, the API reported crude supply draw erases the myth that shale can offset OPEC and non-OPEC cuts barrel for barrel.

In options trading, a straddle is literally a sit-on-the-fence strategy. By purchasing a put and a call at the same strike (price of underlying commodity) for the same time period, an investor isn’t making a conventional directional bet; rather the investor is looking for a big move either up or down. The rub is that the big move must be greater than the sum of the two option premia or the bet goes south. But that is in the nature of the trade.

If you look at data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) you will see that it is obvious that OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts are starting to have an impact on U.S. oil inventory. The API not only reported a whopping 8.67-million-barrel drawdown in oil inventory last week, they also reported that during the last five weeks there has been a drop of over 19.277 million barrels.

Oil is struggling to find direction in the aftermath of the French terror attack, worries about the French election and the direction of U.S. tax reform.

Leading Gulf oil producers Saudi Arabia and Kuwait gave the clearest signal yet that OPEC plans to extend into the second half of the year a deal with non-OPEC producers to curb oil supplies.

OPEC cut oil output in March by more than pledged under a supply reduction deal and said oil inventories had fallen in February, suggesting that its effort to clear a supply glut that has weighed on world oil prices is succeeding.

Oil hit a one-month high near $55 a barrel on Wednesday as a fall in U.S. crude inventories raised hopes OPEC-led supply cuts were clearing a glut, while an outage at the largest UK North Sea oilfield lent support.