Too light, too sweet

Trump's deregulations will only touch the margins of production, but he will generate plenty of geopolitical risk

US light tight oil output is transforming world oil markets. After falling during the 2015 oil price crash, total American production—of which shale is now a major source—surged back onto markets, and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects output to rise another 0.5m barrels a day in 2018, to a record 9.9m b/d. Much of this new production is finding its way onto global markets, and exports now regularly run over 1m b/d. But can there be too much of a good thing? Specifically, with Opec's light sweet crude exporters Libya and Nigeria staggering back from extended production outages, and big Persian Gulf producers tightening availabilities of middle-gravity sour crudes, is there a