Crude oil traders are on much slicker slopes these days and the short-term offers no clues on technical support because the energy commodity continues to make new lows. Instead, one has to widen their perspective to a monthly time frame to get a better reference on price support levels.

OPEC recently concluded  its bi-annual meeting and, as expected, it did not cut production quotas. That means that means the role of swing producer shifts to North American shale players. Patterns or anomalies in the weekly EIA crude oil inventory supply reports will be closely followed and could have a proportionately larger impact on the energy markets.

Summary Analysis: At these levels, I’d expect more producers to come offline and a continual decline in the deployment of rigs, which will eventually have a stabilizing effect on prices. For now, crude oil needs to maintain key long-term support @ $33. Should it fail to do so, then the probability of trading with a 20-handle becomes much higher. In the meanwhile, it would not be uncommon to get a dead-cat bounce at these levels before encountering another failed top and continuation of a bearish trend that correlates with weak supply-demand fundamentals.