Nymex Crude Tumbles as U.S. Oil Inventories Surge

Wall Street Journal ^ | April 4, 2012 | Jerry A. DiColo

[StevieRay20]

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Crude futures tumbled Wednesday after a government data showed U.S. oil stockpiles rose by 9 million barrels, the largest weekly increase in more than three years. The report, which topped analysts' estimates calling for a 1.9 million-barrel increase, comes amid a surge in U.S. production that is forcing traders to refocus on the supply picture after Iran tensions drove market action for much of the year. "It's been eerily quiet from the Iranians, and that fear has subsided," said Stephen Schork, head of energy-trading adviser Schork Group. "We've gotten massive builds over the past few weeks...there is plenty of oil." Light, sweet crude for May delivery recently traded $2.87, or 2.7%, lower at $101.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest since Feb. 16. Brent crude on the ICE Futures exchange traded $1.88 lower at $122.98 a barrel.

[RC2]

Our country needs to get away from OPEC and set the price on our own oil. As it stands now, we are being held hostage by the Middle East. Enough is enough.

[RayChuang88]

In fact, we need to be very aggressive in producing oil, especially now with better production techniques that that can extract oil out of supposedly "tapped out" oilfields. Indeed, just the North American continent and offshore may be sitting on as much as TWO TRILLION barrels of oil that may soon be extractable in situ even from oil tar sands and oil shale on an economic basis and from untapped offshore reserves.

And that's not including exploiting wind power in the upper Midwest, solar power in the US Southwest, and developing the liquid fluoride thorium reactor to take advantage of the 440,000 tons of proven thorium reserves in the USA. Aggressively develop all these and within 10-15 years the USA can officially thumb their noses at all the Middle Eastern oil producers.

[Sequoyah101]

Who didn’t see this coming?

All you gotta do is look at stocks and see them coming up. Driving is down, there is a resistance level to price. Oil is not inelastic beyond a certain level.

My renters have moved 5 miles closer to town for a worse house to save money on gas.

[Buckeye McFrog]

or is Obama working the markets by releasing phony numbers again?

[cicero2k]

The eevil speculators take a hit.

I wonder if BOR will be sympathetic.

[coolbreeze]

Our country needs to get away from OPEC and set the price on our own oil. As it stands now, we are being held hostage by the Middle East. Enough is enough.

I do believe that before OPEC, the price of a barrel of oil was set by the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Texas.

[mongo141]

Probably, Nothing the WH says or publishes is to be trusted!

[PoloSec]

True...not only that, but businesses that use lots of oil in production have and are going out business, lots of economic reasons for oil reserves to grow, oil is not being put to productive use.

[RC2]

One thing that people don’t realize also is the fact that if we stop importing from the Middle East, that would leave more oil for the rest of the world. I would imagine that prices would fall dramatically. This in itself would slow down any threats from the Middle East.

[backwoods-engineer]

With 2 eastern refineries going offline, I don’t think the price of gas in my neck of the woods (NC) will be going down anytime soon, even with the crude oil glut.

[Stentor]

Got to give it to the Fed. They can still jam commodities, float the paper and come up with the spin to explain all of it. What a load of criminal crap.

[Sawdring]

Maybe we need to drain as much of the oil from the Middle East before draining our own. This assumes oil is really a fossil fuel and there is a finite supply.

[AdSimp]

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say the evidence suggests there is a meeting early in every new president's term, where the Saudi’s whisper, there’ll be a Swiss bank account with whatever number you want, for you to enjoy after your term, just as long as you leave oil prices high.

Heck, maybe each congresscritter gets the same message.

Good thing I am not a conspiracy theorist, eh?

[familyop]

Can’t keep oil down for long with nonsense and anti-defense policies, although harvesting more of it would lower prices. Without more domestic oil production and manufacturing, oil will continue up, and the dollar down, in the long run.

[RayChuang88]

What's interesting is that China is seriously investing in Sasol's coal-to-liquid fuel technology so China could use its vast coal reserves to make motor fuels. That way, China won't be so dependent on getting crude oil from the politically-unstable Middle East in the long run, even with China's current deal with Iran.

In fact, the USA should look at heavily investing in CTL technology, since some of the world's biggest coal reserves are here in the USA.