The Great Oil Bubble Has Burst

telegraph.co.uk ^ | 08/08/2008 | Martin Vander Weyer

[kellynla]

Bad news from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline - an installation that may not normally draw much of your attention, but which is a throbbing artery of global energy supply, carrying vital oil supplies from Central Asia towards a tanker terminal on the Turkish coast. On some remote, sun-baked plain of Anatolia, an explosion sparked a fire earlier this week, temporarily cutting the flow through the pipeline.

But guess what? Here's the good news: the oil price did not zoom upwards in response, not a blip, barely a flicker. Actually the price of a barrel of crude has been falling: from a peak of $145 in early July, it came down to $117 and was trading yesterday at $120. That's almost a 20 per cent drop in little more than three weeks.

If the trend continues into September at anything like the same rate of descent, most of the inflationary spike of the past 12 months will miraculously have been sliced away. This is a dramatic reversal, and it is worth trying to work out why it is happening and what it means.

Just possibly, it means that what investors refer to in shorthand as the great "oil up" story has finally revealed itself not as the fundamental reflection of scarce supply that its adherents liked to claim, but as a simple, speculative bubble that was always going to burst.

[SkyDancer]

I heard that Saudi crude was light sweet - that the tankers actually burn it straight out of the ground on their way here ....

[proud_yank]

What he doesn’t tell you is that the Saudi oil is heavy crude. It costs much more to refine it into gas than our light sweet crude. He’s looking for higher gas prices.

Throughout both countries, Saudi and the US produce heavy, light, sweet and sour crude oil. Individual reservoir properties can vary greatly, even if they are within the same operating field, not to mention country.

[proud_yank]

It would have to be refined first. There are very light crudes that can be burned in a diesel engine, some possibly in gasoline engines, but it would not be good for the motor.

In some impoverished countries, people will drill into cross-country lines that transport light crude and NGLS (Natural Gas Liquids, come from of natural gas during production) to use in their vehicles and sell. It is an interesting safety and integrity concern to say the very least.

Long time no see, how you been?!?

[SkyDancer]

OK -thanks for the information.

Been doing good - flying and all ....

Jane