The sell-off in the oil market took on unreasonable dimensions. Oil-prices were falling almost continuously for weeks now and find themselves marginally above the lows, compared to the crisis period.

The speculative financial investors are partially to blame for this huge price slippage, as there was extremely little optimism with net long positions of merely 34000 contracts as per December 8.

There is no small number of indicators to indicate that the market will soon be balanced, and it will be sustained. Demand is set to grow by over 1.8 mn barrels per day this year.

"We had warned in the summer that the market was completely ignoring the oversupply and that oil prices of over $60 were not sustainable. At present, the market appears to be equally deaf on one ear, "hearing" only the bearish arguments", says Commerzbank in a research note.