The term “demand destruction” is again entering the lexicon of the current crude oil market as the sharp rise in prices raises concerns about when do consumers start cutting back on their fuel consumption. While it’s probably impossible to pick the exact point at which this happens, the risk in the current cycle of rising prices is that it happens earlier than in the past in Asia, the main region driving rising crude demand. The reason for this is that many countries in Asia used the prior period of falling crude prices to end, or dramatically scale back, their fuel subsidies. This means that this time consumers in countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia are fully exposed to rising crude prices, something that […]