In other words, you never got a handle on what happened at Semgroup. I’ll wait for someone else’s opinion.
How big must Semgroup's positions have been to rack up $2.5 billion in losses? In the simplest (and purely hypothetical) terms, to lose that much since January, Semgroup would need to have shorted 50 million barrels of crude oil at $100, then lost roughly $50 on each barrel. This is enormous, says Andrew Lipow, a Houston oil trading consultant, noting that such a position would be equal to one-sixth of the entire U.S. crude inventory of 300 million barrels."Betting turned into a habit they couldn't get out of. The only way to keep going was to make bigger bets," says attorney Levy.