Commodity markets produce a particular kind of story when supply gets tight, and the story always sounds the same: the buffer is gone, the cushion has vanished, the system is about to seize. The current version has a name, tank bottoms, referring to the minimum crude volume required to keep oil moving from wellhead to refinery at all.

The claim is that the world is approaching it. Like most such narratives it contains something true and a great deal that is not, and separating the two matters because policy decisions are being made on the assumption that the panic is correct.

Europe remained the dominant destination for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports for the second consecutive month in February, driven by cold weather and strong prices. As the world’s largest LNG exporter, the U.S. has played a critical role in supplying Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine significantly curtailed Russian gas exports to the continent.

In February, U.S. LNG exports totaled 8.35 million metric tonnes (MT), just shy of the monthly record of 8.6 MT set in December 2023 and slightly lower than the 8.46 MT exported in January. The shorter month, with three fewer production days, contributed to the slight decline.

OPEC+ has chosen to inch open the taps again in November, adding roughly 137,000 barrels per day, essentially a carbon copy of October’s step. After several years of supply restraint to nurse prices and rebuild cohesion, the coalition has spent 2025 edging in the opposite direction, lifting targets by more than 2.7 million barrels per day in total.

The stated logic is straightforward: reclaim market share ceded to faster-moving rivals, especially U.S. shale, even if that means living with softer prices for a while. That posture arrives just as futures markets are fretting about a fourth-quarter surplus, with Brent slipping beneath $65 and analysts sketching a comfortable cushion of barrels into 2026 on the back of weaker demand and swelling non-OPEC supply.