@Atman. The reason the oil price is dropping is a lot more complicated than an alleged glut. There is a concerted effort to drive down the price following a meeting between Kerry and the Saudis. Not the least of their targets are Venezuela and Russia, both of whom need an oil price of around $90 a barrel to meet their internal costs. Geopolitics are a crucial element and an understanding of this is almost entirely missing from western analysis.

I would also disagree about US fracking being "efficient". Once oil dropped below $80 a barrel fracking became uneconomic as it costs that much to produce. There are also enormous environmental issues with fracking, which is why the UK and many European nations are opposed. The UK's chief scientific adviser recently issued a strong warning, which, surprise surprise, wasn't widely reported here.

William Engdahl, a Germany based analyst, is well worth reading on this and related issues.

Anti green, atman & james,
What you are seeing IS peak oil. This yo yoing of oil prices is exactly
what Colin Campbell & Kenneth Deffeyes predicted in their books about the peak.
It is amazing that they got it so right.
What they did not expect was the development of the tight oil and gas
in the US. That has provided a brief opportunity to try and mitigate
the effects of peak oil. We did not take it.

The main driver of the fall in price has been the decline in demand in
the developed countries, especially Europe. There is also a decline in
capital availability. I do not understand much about that but
Gail Tverberg has written a couple of articles about the credit factor.

The price will Yo Yo up again, perhaps as early as next year.
Deffeyes says this will happen just a small number of cycles before
the last cycle ends and sags into the major permanent crash.

The low price will stop the tight oil drilling in the next few months
and the tight oil production will collapse.
The well head price is about $70 to $100.

If you say so.

James - I doubt that the US is behind the oil price decrease particularly as it will make some of their own shale oil too expensive to produce. The Saudis want to retain market share and simultaneously push out small scale oil producers in the US while hitting the Russians and other states in the middle-east. Its all about retaining market dominance.

As for the continuing myth of peak oil - The Peak Oilers should look at their own history of predictions which has been extremely poor in predicting the end of oil availability. The peak in oil usage will occur when demand decreases not supply.

Well Altman thats just the point, demand has decreased.
I do agree the US not behind the fall, not while they are a 40% importer.
Anyway oil production peaked in 2005 so it is now history.
The tight oil is only a tempory expensive fill in why we do nothing about the problem.