A funny thing happened on the way to $80 crude – somehow, we’ve ended up instead at $98 per barrel of West Texas Intermediate. The “somehow” includes today’s jaw-dropping 10.6 million barrel drop in commercial US crude inventories, on top of the 5.6 million barrel draw the prior week.

That’s hardly a sign of any sort of impending crude shortage: at 375 million barrels, inventories remain above the upper limit of the typical range for this time of year.

But it is an important indicator of the bullish short-term demand trend.

The proxy measure used by the US Energy Information Administration, products supplied, is up 4 percent from a year ago over the last four weeks. Jet fuel supplied has been up 6.1 percent year-over-year, no surprise to anyone who’s purchased airfare of late. But even gasoline, long a victim of the US auto fleet’s increasing fuel efficiency, is showing signs of life, deliveries running 2.6 percent higher than a year ago over the last four weeks.

Gasoline stockpiles showed a big jump this week as US refineries ramped up production to the fastest rate in more than a year, and remain way above the historical range. Regardless, the month-end dip in WTI crude to $92 a barrel appears to have been quickly bought, and refiners seem sufficiently confident of demand to have been running pretty much full throttle.

Indeed, the International Energy Agency (IEA) today raised its global demand growth forecast for 2014 to 1.2 million barrels per day, citing specifically improved third-quarter demand in the US as well as Europe.

Developed countries remain a footnote to the global demand story, with the US Energy Information Administration, which expects similar growth to that forecast by the IEA next year, counting on China to account for about a third of the increased demand and for other developing countries to supply the rest.

But the apparently accelerating US recovery remains a wild card at a time when North America is expected to supply all of the production increases needed to meet the growing global demand. The rest of the world is not obliging as capital pours into high-return US exploration at the expense of riskier projects abroad, and as disorder in Libya, Iraq and Venezuela, along with the Iran embargo, gives Saudi Arabia unusual sway over the global price.

Longer-term, two processes threaten the crude market. One is the likelihood that the spread of advanced drilling techniques around the globe will eventually flood the planet with cheap shale gas, which after a sufficiently large investment can be processed into fuels that will cut into crude demand.

The other, and perhaps more immediate, risk, is that things have gotten bad enough in Iran to have forced a change in policy that at least offers the remote prospect of a recovery in crude output and exports, and that similar changes could be in store over the medium term in Venezuela as well as in Libya. But these turnarounds may not materialize next year, and in the meantime crude is liable to spike at the first hint of further trouble in the increasingly volatile Middle East.

But let’s assume, as Robert and I do — and will elaborate in our annual forecasts in the next issue — that oil prices will be flat to moderately lower over the course of the next year. What does that mean for the makeup of The Energy Strategist portfolio?

It means a continuing balancing act between the best and fastest-growing established drillers and the refiners who could benefit if cheaper fuel prices continue to drive increased demand.

It means we stick with unsinkable battleships like Chevron (NYSE: CVX) but also with dividend champs like Seadrill (NYSE: SDRL), which is now flashing a 9.5 percent forward yield while the market ascertains that the recent slowdown in spending on offshore rigs is as temporary as Seadrill expects.

It means we diversify into low-cost natural gas drillers like Cabot Oil and Gas (NYSE: COG) and Antero Resources (NYSE: AR), as well as solar leader First Solar (NYSE: FSLR) without losing sight of how profitable crude drilling is right now.

And, on that note, it means taking on additional risk by investing in drillers considerably smaller than most of the names we’ve recommended in the past, because we can secure an attractive entry price after the profit-taking of recent weeks, and because in an environment that’s shaping up for 2014 small drillers that can prove themselves offer the greatest upside.

Read on for two new Aggressive Portfolio picks. More than just about any stock we recommend, these are only suitable for aggressive speculators. But their potential rewards more than live up to the elevated risk, and what’s more appear well within reach given the recent developments.