Oil market

what happened? log on and some few companies are now losing money. various materials but most noticeably the oil? 8 billion surplus on FB? Did i miss something?

When 'entities' are canceled, I'm pretty sure the materials are put on the world market.

Oversupply can happen in all products.

In this case, while monthly production is 6-7 billion barrels per game month, there are recent months with a supply of 16 Billion.

This means that someone on FB has been dumping oil on the market. This happens all the time with many products.
You can check the Oil supply graph on the utilization and supply page in the trade menu.

Awesome...

Shame corporations can store that much product in inventory without overhead costs going through the roof......

The corporations do not store the product. The sell it to their own (country or enterprise) or they just sell it on the market.
countries and enterprises can hold "strategic" reserves of any product even if they do not use it on a monthly bases.

They can buy any products on the market, then trade with other countries, corporations or they can put it back on the market, some times with a profit.

I do this with a lot of products, my enterprise stores up huge amounts of materials waiting for red and than dumps the supply on the market at 200-300 times it's value, it's called market opportunity.

Thank you Feathered Serpent. I've been peeking around other countries and enterprises that aren't set to all secret.

Still not realistic. Storing massive amounts of products, while good business sense, is even better sense if the storing has no cost associated with it. More sense for hard, durable goods - but that same technique could be used for fruit, vegetables, and other foodstuffs. Anyone want to buy the bread I've been hoarding for the last 36 months, waiting on a market spike to sell? It's been kept nice and fresh - at no cost to me or the consumer.

There should be an overhead charge for storing more than an expected amount of material - whether inventory in a factory - because space is at a premium for production, storing 80 billion barrels of oil in a secret hopechest located underneath your desk in your Enterprise HQ, or actually out on land in your country. Very unrealistic for the product to lose all mass, size and weight while it's in your Enterprise only to assume them again when sold. In the real world, you'd have to move them or store them in a concrete place. The order forms are pretty much set up for a standard in every category - that could be the "inventory room" for the product, slightly smaller for a corporation than for a country but then again, some of these countries are small, and livable, workable land is at a premium, just like production room. And with up to a year or so of production being considered, that's generous in the extreme for products whose normal inventory is measured in days or weeks at best.

I fail to find any place in my enterpise that includes fixed assets like property - so I think that hopechest better be real big.

Implementing something along those lines will help keep the market stable - instead of the constant flare ups of players cornering the market, inflating the price, and dumping - only to repeat the cycles. Either a fixed overhead charge per unit, or a different upgrade to go along with quality and effectivity.

Those market shortages are great. I'm selling now at 200 above quality in just about every corporation I own - both state run and enterprise run, and am finally starting to turn a decent profit. Was only a matter of reading all the advice on the forums, then visiting around to see if what was preached is actually practiced. Maybe that advice was meant to be helpful. But it will screw over every new player - like me - that reads it.