Liam Denning, Columnist

Oil's Disco Inferno Is Less Hot Now

Middle East share of output is back to 1970s levels, but competition is higher.

July 7, 2016 at 4:13 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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Imagine if, instead of a trip to Whole Foods, your grocery shopping involved a trip to your city's sketchiest neighborhood to barter with a handful of store owners who occasionally shut you out or start smashing each others' windows.

Well, that's actually how you buy a lot of your oil.