Do you want the good news or the bad news? In the oil market at least, it hardly matters these days – the two are interchangeable. This year’s biggest one-day jump in the Nymex spot oil price, of 5.5 per cent, was on December 12. The reason: central banks announced co-ordinated action to unfreeze lending markets.

It is odd when emergency measures to unblock financial markets provide a reason to pile into commodities. When oil bulls are not showing touching faith in the Federal Reserve’s powers of intervention, they are warning of impending “peak oil” production. Peak oil theories, however, tend to ignore the impact of technology and pricing on output and consumption. And while the industrialised world’s oil inventories have fallen this year, to just under 53 days, demand cover remains higher than in late 2005, when hurricanes disrupted supply severely.