my favorite chart of the day early this morning, wti and brent converge. now wti and brent invert. for the first time in about a year, we have seen the price of west texas trading higher than brent crude. let me ask first of all what you think of that in version there. gamutbecause the saudis has worked and u.s. production has fallen? years the u.s. has been leading the world in oil supply growth. a result, constraint pipeline infrastructure, wti has traded at a discount to essentially the rest of the world. is not growing, u.s. supply has been shrinking since march, and it's going to continue to shrink through 2016. with that in mind, it's perfectly logical that the two halves converged. you might see wti trade at a premium. earlier today we were talking to amos from the secretary of state energy envoy and he was talking about the export ban being lifted. will that affect the price action? at all? timing on lifting the export ban is perfectly ironic. they are doing this right on the cusp of a year when u.s. oil going to increase for the first time in a decade. this would have been

crude, there is a spread between brent and wti. this convergedhave numbers out saying u.s. stocks are falling, but i also charted the baker hughes rig count. very interesting chart over five years, it falls off a cliff and continues diving down, so this is what happens when opec produces more and more oil. part of the reason -- a lot of people will say it is a ploy to stop or hurt iran, but it's also an attempt to get u.s. producers to phase out. that is holding the price of wti and that is why brent has now converged with wti. a very interesting look at what's going on in the oil patch. thanks, buts 2015, let's look at 2016. when it comes to the fed, will be bowls or the bears when the day? mark gilbert is with us with -- from london. best --e: he rocks the the vest. that there defeats could be an upside, one of which the fed and the others like greece -- at the landmines and the grenades and the potential -- try to be optimistic and find some things next year that might turn out to be surprises. larry summers had for more reasons why the fed is

michael: right now at the end of the year is the convergence between brent and west texas.n our chart how they have been moving extra -- how they have been moving ever closer together. brent was trading below west texas earlier today. is this because we are going to exit port oil now? george: you have -- vince: you have removed the governing item, but you have the factor of elevated inventories across the petroleum value chain, whether we're talking refined distillates or products in general. there is a lot of wood to chop to get through in 2016. given that, we have inventories roughly 30% above the five-year average. crude inventories, there is a lot to go through to tighten those balances. you need the demand to come through. you have not seen it so far with respect to the seasonal heating demand, and you are entering a spring maintenance season for the refiners with heavy inventories, and that typically, when refining season -- when that season comes into play, you see you less refining the man. back to the geopolitical conversation for a moment. when i ran comes back wi