Saw another article this morning talkin' 60 bucks. Can't find it now. But I have a thing against buying oil.
In the "End of Suburbia", somebody, ? Simmons, uses the refinery situation as one argument that we are just about there. Said it made no sense to build a multi-million buck refinery for a 1%ROI with a dwindling resource base. Which is why nobody has built any in a while. But, China is building one.
Oil prices rise further amid supply worries
06.16.2005, 01:59 PM
LONDON (AFX) - World oil prices continued to rise, after surging the previous day as official data showed a drop in US crude inventories, sparking supply worries despite OPEC's decision to increase its daily output quota.
In London, Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in August rose 35 cents to 55.59 usd per barrel. The July contract expired Wednesday at 54.50 usd.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in July, rose 53 cents to 56.10 usd a barrel in early deals. The contract surged to an intra-day high of 56.75 usd on Wednesday.
'Attention in the end has focused on the US inventory data because excluding Saudi Arabia, nobody really thinks that the other OPEC members have actually got any capacity to put their output higher,' Seymour Pierce analyst Richard Slape said.
'All they're doing is legitimising the current overproduction.'
Oil prices had jumped briefly to two-month highs on Wednesday after the US Department of Energy (DoE) said crude oil reserves fell 1.8 mln barrels to 339 mln in the week ending June 10.
The data was released a few hours after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to raise its production ceiling by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) on July 1 and said it might repeat the move by September.
However traders reacted little to the move as OPEC's quota increase was largely seen as a symbolic gesture because the cartel was already pumping more oil than its official ceiling of 27.5 mln bpd set before Wednesday's increase.
Despite the DoE reporting a rise in weekly US distillates stockpiles, the market remains worried about a possible heating fuel shortage during the fourth quarter.
'Crude stocks are still about 10 pct higher than they were a year ago, but distillate stockpiles are barely above their mark at this time last year, worrying some dealers who say heating oil stocks may not build adequately before peak-demand winter' in the northern hemisphere, analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm said.
forbes.com |
