The unprecedented spike in the oil price on Monday September 22 – the last day of trading in the October futures contract – may have been caused partly by refiners, according to oil specialists in the US and London.
The October West Texas Intermediate future on the New York Mercantile Exchange opened at $104.55 a barrel on that Monday and soared to an intraday high of $130 before dipping to close at $120.92.
Media have presented the freak trading as purely the result of short-covering by traders who had been betting on oil falling.
But a trader in the US has told Futures and Options Intelligence that he believed ConocoPhillips had come into the market the previous Friday needing 1m barrels of oil, having underestimated the quantity it would need, amid the disruption caused by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Then on Monday, the trader said, ConocoPhillips increased its...