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With oil now at $50 a barrel, you no longer hear Congress complaining about oil speculators. The irony is there's probably more real speculation going on today than there ever was back in June and July. I'm talking about the type of speculation that involves hoarding oil today so it can be sold for more down the road. Today's speculators are actually buying oil. They're not merely flipping futures contracts without taking delivery - which is what hedge funds and commodities index funds were doing when they were in the crosshairs of Congress this summer. As I've argued before, investors...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Saudi Arabia said Saturday that it hoped to raise oil prices to $75 a barrel, but indicated that no measures would probably be taken until an OPEC meeting next month in Algeria. OPEC countries will have to cut oil production by 3 million barrels a day to hike price to $75, group says. OPEC countries will have to cut oil production by 3 million barrels a day to hike price to $75, group says. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said that OPEC will "do what needs to be done" to shore up falling oil prices when...

Text size: increase text sizedecrease text size Conquering The Cold Oil Prices Falling, But Interest In Alternative Fuels High By THERESA SULLIVAN BARGER | Special To The Courant November 23, 2008 Glen Rokicki Glen Rokicki peeks into the belly of a Vermont Casting wood-burning stove in the showroom of Fireside Supply in Hebron to check out the clean-burning aspects of BioBricks. (JOHN WOIKE / HARTFORD COURANT / November 20, 2008) Even before heating oil spiked toward $5 a gallon last summer, businesses that sell wood and pellet stoves were busy. By early fall, some pellet and wood retailers were so...

Oil prices are likely to sink as low as $35 a barrel without a massive production cut from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Lawrence Eagles, head of commodities research at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Friday. OPEC needs to cut 3 million barrels a day to compensate for the bleak global economic outlook, which is expected to result next year in the first contraction to oil demand since the early 1980s. The group agreed in October to reduce output by 1.5 million barrels a day, but OPEC is unlikely to successfully make further cuts quickly enough to prevent further...

Oil prices on Thursday hit levels not seen in more than three years, and retail gasoline prices are now below $2 across nearly half of the country on dour economic reports suggesting a painful economic pullback. Benchmark crude fell as low as $48.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, levels last seen on May 18, 2005, when oil hit $46.80 a barrel. Meanwhile, prices at the pump fell again overnight nationally close to $2 a gallon, with the average price in 23 states even less than that.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil dropped more than 3 percent on Thursday, touching the lowest level since May 2005 as record U.S. job losses intensified concerns of a long and deep global recession and further crushed demand expectations. The U.S. government reported the number of workers making new claims for jobless benefits last week surged to the highest in 16 years, helping to push down global equity markets. U.S. crude fell $1.81 to $51.81 a barrel by 1251 p.m. EST after earlier touching $49.75, marking the lowest level since May 25, 2005, when prices hit $49.58. London Brent crude shed...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Remember $4 gas? Soon it will be $2 gas. As the nation's economy worsens, the demand for oil and gas wanes. As a result, prices drop. And drop. And drop. The price of gas fell overnight Sunday for the 60th consecutive day. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell 2 cents to $2.105 a gallon, according to a survey released Sunday by the American Automobile Association. A gallon of gas has dropped nearly in half since hitting an all-time high of $4.114 on July 17. It's been nearly two years since prices...

OPEC members will meet later this month in a bid to halt the tumble in crude prices, amid signs that a global economic slowdown is punishing near-term demand for oil. The news of the meeting, which analysts expect will result in another production cut, came as oil prices hit a 22-month low amid fresh evidence that the world's industrialized economies are in recession and consumers and industries are cutting back on fuel spending. The Paris-based International Energy Agency on Thursday slashed its forecasts for global oil demand, saying it will grow by just 0.1% this year. That is down from...

Steadily and stealthily, a natural gas cartel has emerged over the last seven years. On October 21 in Tehran, the Gas Exporting Countries' Forum (GECF) agreed to form a cartel. Russia, Iran, and Qatar announced that they intend to form a yet–unnamed group to "coordinate gas policy."

Your responses are still in pouring in from last week’s “Return of FDR” series. Many of them are excellent. We’ll look at those -- and take a hard look at the dollar and gold, as promised -- on Wednesday. But today I want to talk about a situation that feels like a ticking time bomb -- a time bomb that could go off sooner rather than later.After climbing to nearly $150 a barrel earlier this year, the price of crude oil has fallen. A lot. Crude’s big drop is good news for consumers, who won’t have to spend as much...

December crude futures on the NYMEX opened $3.26/barrel lower at $68.92/b Wednesday as the US dollar soared and US equity futures show for a lower open. The US Dollar Index on ICE traded at near two-year highs earlier at 85.921. When New York floor trading began, the dollar index was trading at 85.44, showing a 145 point gain. Dow Jones and S&P 500 futures in Chicago were lower, signaling a lower open across US equity markets. "The double whammy of a further strengthening in the dollar and a renewed plunge in global equities is providing primary impetus behind the overnight...

OPEC will need to order a "substantial" cut in oil output at next week's emergency meeting in Vienna, Algerian Energy Minister and current OPEC chief Chakib Khelil said Saturday."There will be a reduction in production at the next extraordinary meeting of OPEC, and it will have to be a substantial one to get the balance right between supply and demand," he told reporters."If it has to be 1.5 million barrels per day, or two million barrels per day, that's what it will be," Khelil added, during a visit to the southern Algerian province of Tamanrasset.Iran -- OPEC's second largest exporter...

It would be a tragedy if falling prices were to extinguish such alternatives and — given the time lag inherent in energy development — leave the country vulnerable to a yet another round of shocks. There is no disputing, as Ben Bernanke said, that recently falling oil prices are giving the economy a shot in the arm. But new energy projects also create jobs, and though oil prices impose a cost, Europe has lived with high prices (because of the imposition of taxes) and adjusted to them. ... What the country doesn’t want is to remain dependent only on oil...

he following First Take is real-time analysis and opinion by the MarketWatch commentary team.SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations has called an emergency meeting for Oct. 24 aimed at halting a precipitous drop in oil prices. Crude, despite an uptick Friday, has crumbled to $72 a barrel, half the price it fetched in July. See Futures Movers. Funny how fast things can change. Gone is the steady drone of peak-oil forecasts. Gone is the fear that we are in the pockets of "folks that don't like us very much." Prices are down at the pump, and...

Many Americans Tried to Save on Their Heating Bills and Are Now Paying the Price This summer, like so many past years, Bob Forguites decided to buy his home heating oil early and lock in his price for the winter. Oil was selling for about $4.50 a gallon back then, and it looked as if it wasn't about to fall. Forguites locked in at $4.10 a gallon. "It was a good price at that time," Forguites recalled. But now with the global economy near or in a recession, oil prices have plummeted to about $3 a gallon in his area...

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Oil prices jumped above $72 a barrel Friday in Asia from a 14-month low as investors bet fears that a severe global recession will devestate crude demand may be overblown.

Vienna, Oct 16 (DPA) The price for crude oil produced by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has fallen below $70, the group said Thursday.One barrel (159 litres) of OPEC crude stood at $68.58 Wednesday, $4.91 lower than $73.49 on the previous day. Citing the negative effect of the financial crisis on global oil demand, the cartel lowered its global crude oil demand forecast for 2009 by 450,000 barrels per day, to an average 87.2 million barrels per day. The group’s oil ministers are set to gather for an extraordinary session in Vienna on Nov 18 to discuss...

OPEC said Thursday it has brought forward to October 24 an emergency meeting to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on oil markets, after initially scheduling the conference for November 18. "The OPEC Secretary General, Abdalla Salem El-Badri, has announced today that, following consultations with the President of the OPEC Conference and colleague Ministers, it has been decided to re-schedule the Extraordinary Meeting of the OPEC Conference. This will now take place at OPEC Headquarters, Vienna, on Friday, 24th October 2008 rather than on 18th November 2008, as previously announced," OPEC said a brief statement from the group's...

It's become another wild day for Wall Street. By 12:30 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 34 points to 8,605 after plunging 733 points on Wednesday, its second-biggest point loss in its history. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 22 to 1,651, after Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs) Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said a deal with Yahoo (YHOO, news, msgs) still makes sense. Ballmer spoke at a Gartner conference in Florida. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 3 points to 911. On Monday, the Dow had soared 936 points; it was the only day this...

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