In the summer of 2008, inadequate natural gas production capacity and strong demand created a large deficit that quickly exhausted inventories. The lack of an inventory buffer necessitated sharply higher prices to bring the demand down in line with supply to keep the market in balance (demand destruction). Due to the financial crisis which started towards the end of 2008, demand (for oil and gas) has fallen far below supply, such that large surpluses are beginning to breach global storage capacity, requiring production shut-ins motivated by sharp declines in spot prices (supply destruction). Storage is the mechanism that creates the link between spot and forward prices. As storage capacity is exhausted, spot prices are disconnected from forward prices. Global working oil storage capacity is less than 10 days of demand, so less than 10 days of use separates demand from supply destruction. In 1980 that number was more than 28 days, which suppressed volatility to a fraction of the level at the beginning of 2009