I'm still confused about oil prices. Why has it jumped up in the past month? In oil commodity trader lingo, oil is in a massive backwardation. The near month contract is priced about $108/bbl but the July 2014 contract is $95/bbl. Normally, commodity markets are in "contango" where current prices are lower than next year's prices. Contango happens because the commodity has to be stored, plus there's always the unknowns that increase prices next year. Oil should have contango because its storage costs are higher than, say, metals or grains. But ... oil is acting very strange. The current spread between now and July2014 is $13, a record. (Although it's not a record if viewed as a percentage) My guess is that the traders had models of the oil inventory at Cushing, OK. But the recent reversal of a pipeline is sending crude to the Gulf but the Keystone-XL pipeline might never deliver oil to Cushing tanks. After 3 weeks of draw downs at Cushing is triggering the traders models to expect higher oil prices. My conclusion -- oil prices are at/near a high peak and are heading lower by fall.