Posted on 06/11/2008 12:32:53 PM PDT by tobyhill
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices shot up Wednesday as the dollar slipped and the U.S. government reported that crude supplies shrank more-than-expected last week.
In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Information Administration said crude supplies fell by 4.6 million barrels last week. Analysts were looking for a drop of 1.4 million barrels, according to a poll by energy research firm Platts.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose $5.07 to settle at $136.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract surged nearly $11 on Friday to set an all-time high of $139.12 before giving up $7 earlier this week.
A softening of the U.S. dollar also contributed to the rise in crude prices Wednesday. The euro bought $1.5566, up from $1.5449 Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
That spam is killing my very limited bandwidth
These are minor shifts from week to week. Overall inventories are at fairly high level now. Any minor bit of bad news on the supply front is used to jack the price up $5 bucks a barrel - even if the news makes no sense or is really non-news.
Small point: The environazis didn’t influence the rats all that much. The nazis are the shock troops of the ‘destroy America’ rat party.
In 1997 global oil demand was 73 million bpd...in 2007 global oil demand is 85 million bpd. Thats a 16% increase in 10 years. Although oil supply increased 16% over those 10 years, it didn't come from increased production...it came from removal of excess capacity. OPEC had about 7 million bpd of excess capacity in 1997 and that excess capacity has vanished. Under those circumstances, oil speculators are making the right choice in bidding up the price of oil They know that China and India are growing and will demand more oil over the next ten years...but they don't see where the additional production is going to come from. When you combine that situation with the fact that many mature producers (China, USA, UK, Indonesia, Norway and Venezuela) are seeing their oil production go down, you can see that the oil speculators are doing the right thing.
Someone, somewhere, or many someones is manipulating this through different avenues to hurt the US economy.
Hurting any one elses economy is just an added bonus.
You are precisely correct!!! The longer that we wait before we begin producing more oil, the worse it will be. And one other thing...those who propose "alternatives" to solve the problem are missing the point. It takes a lot of oil (and time) to build a new energy infrastructure. If they try to bring on alternatives too quickly they will find that the oil shortages will limit the rate they can add new supply.
We need to produce more oil to provide us a stable energy source for the 35-50 year transition period when we migrate to alternatives.
Here is a link to the dept of energy's inventory figures (released today). Please note that if you scroll down you will see that the crude oil iventory a year ago was 349.5 million barrels...the crude oil inventory today is 302.5. That represents a 14% inventory reduction in one year. Thats huge!!!http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/current/txt/table1.txt
Greed. Plain and simple.
I've been saying the exact same thing. There's no difference between the price of it being $10.00 or a million dollars a gallon if nobody can afford it at $10.00.
That’s it. It’s clear we are going to have to nationalize oilfields to ensure a supply of oil.
That is a workable solution to our problem.
Oh, I mean other countries oil fields, not ours........
About 6 months ago, I thought that oil might drop back down to $60-$70. After far more study, I think oil is far more likely to hit $170+ and gas hit $6/gallon (which I think has a 25% chance of happening this year, I think $5 gas has a 75% chance). Inventories continue to drop despite skyrocketting prices. Until we have strong demand destruction OR large increase in supply, prices are going to continue higher. I think longer term, oil will go up as I see very limited growth of production. We are getting very near ‘peak oil’ in that demand will outstrip supply and we have no way to increase supply much more. A massive government effort to switch to coal would help but we’d have to repeal a ton of environmental laws and restrictions.
Newt’s an idiot. Newt needs to stick to what he knows best....adultry.
Total Stocks (Incl SPR) (7) 1,672.9 1,672.5 1,720.3 0.0 -2.8
That's down all of 2.8 percent. And the stocks of gasoline are WELL up from last year. So why are gasoline prices climbing so fast?
Better to simply roll back the changes from the 2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that helped spawn all this mess. Put trades on ICE terminals from the US under CFTC regulation again. Remove the designation of commercial commodities traders from investment banks. And restrict pension funds from investing directly in commodities index funds, since the taxpayers are providing federal insurance for those pensions and margin calls in case of a drop could eat such investments alive. That will deal with the actual underlying causes.
Sorry about that. So many people have not seen it yet, and are commenting very positively about it.
Several Freepers have asked for copies of the documents for their personal use, and after they email me their email address I mail them a Word document and pdf file of the material.
Are you asking me to stop posting it??
I hate to point this out, but the free market is going to fix this problem for us pretty quickly.
70% of the petroleum consumed in the US is consumed by the family automobile - commuters.
It’s effected car sales, and the car companies are going to respond to this dip by producing products people are going to want to buy.
Drilling isn’t the answer. Let’s just assume its not going to happen. In the meantime, the democrats better enjoy the next two years, because for not doing something about this issue, there is going to be blood in the streets for allowing $8 and $12 gas to happen - worldwide.
Meanwhile, hybrids and electrics are going to start hitting the streets soon. Within three years, if your car still gets less than 30 MPG, then you didn’t have the credit to get a car loan.
At which point the feds WILL step in and help you out, I am sure (after its too late).
Meanwhile, the Saudis and the Russians will scream “We didn’t mean it!!” and the price of oil is going to fall to some pretty low numbers.
That Oil remains high at this point despite the fact that it should be at $80, then it means that the market is waiting for the other shoe to drop in Iran.
How about posting it less frequently? It’s interesting for sure, but there are so many oil threads that it is clogging up our machines out here at the end of the food chain.
Well as I was getting gas the other day I noticed that our gasoline station provides gas that is about 10% ethanol or if you will one tenth of every gallon of gas is ethanol.
Hardly earth shattering news right?
But consider the ramifications of this mixture.....
That means for every ten gallons of gas you buy you are only really getting nine gallons of gas and one gallon of ethanol.
I realize that it works out better with eleven gallons but since our math is based upon tens instead of elevens work with me on this.
In 2006 Based upon this chart 377,608,000 gallons of gas were sold in America per day.
I like round numbers so lets say that roughly 390,000,000 gallons of gas are sold daily in 2008 with the 10% mixture of ethanol mixed in to them.
That means that the Oil Companies are saving about 39,000,000 Gallons of gas a day, of course they aren't really saving it they just aren't supplying it in your gas instead you get ethanol in it's place.
Each day 39 million gallons of gas are, for lack of a better term, saved by the oil companies and yet prices keep rising.
It makes me wonder what they do with the gas they save....
I know they sell it to us later but, and ethanol cost $1.74 per gallon so let's do the math.
If Gas cost $4.20 a gallon and Ethanol cost $1.74 a gallon that ten gallon fill up you paid $42.00 for what could have cost roughly $38.50
Remember that these figures are rough estimates complied by a High School graduate and United States Marine Veteran on the back of an envelope and by no means are as accurate as they could be or should be had I been able to expand my education by going to college.
For every 10 gallons of gas that means the oil companies profit roughly $3.50 or $136,500,000 Daily and $49,822,500,000 yearly by using ethanol.
Personally my head is spinning from the numbers, so I must be wrong somewhere and I invite anyone with a better grasp at math to correct my errors while you are at it figure out how much is going to the US government in the form of taxes so that we can all have better understanding of why Gasoline cost so much.
Duh. In any market with highly inelastic demand, such as oil, small changes in supply can lead to large changes in price.
The real market condition of supply and demand does not justify more than $ 80 for the barrel of oil.
You are basing this on...
No according to the data I have seen. They're pretty much right where they usually are during the early summer.
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