I'm thinking $5 gas by the election, and hope we avoid gas lines. Things are already starting to look a bit tight around the world.
Here's are 2 interesting Oil Drum comments..
For some sad entertainment, I suggest reading the various comments to the news stories on the internet about oil hitting a two year high of $90/barrel.
Here check out this AP story on Yahoo!
finance.yahoo.com
NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices climbed past $90 a barrel on Wednesday as the government reported a drop in the nation's crude supplies. Benchmark oil rose 66 cents to settle at $90.48 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In its weekly petroleum report, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said crude supplies dropped by 5.3 million barrels last week from the week before. That's more than twice the decline expected by analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. EIA said gasoline supplies grew by more than 2 million barrels.
It is very interesting . . . and very scary . . . to see what Joe Six-pack thinks. Basically, it is a hodge-podge of conspiracy theories:
1) It is the speculators fault! (for running up prices)
2) It is big Oil's fault! (for gouging us)
3) It is Obama's fault! (for not letting us drill)
4) It is the GOP's fault! (for being in bed with big oil)
5) It is the tree-hugger's fault (for not letting us drill!)
6) It is OPEC's fault!
7) China is buying up all the oil for a national reserve!
Sadly and not surprisingly . . . pretty much no one blames themselves for being oil users.
The ones that worry me most are the "it is the tree-hugger's fault" since it is wrong and yet it will be acted upon by people who vote against anyone not for drilling everywhere on the mistaken assumption that will reduce oil prices. "Drill, baby, drill" is going to make a big come-back.
If the Dems had some brains, they would just go ahead and make some deals to open up various places for drilling and get the best deal they can get. Because the only way that conspiracy theory will be killed is by actual drilling. Why not drill in ANWR? Every barrel of crude not drilled out of ANWR is dug up out of the Canadian oil sands which is environmentally much worse. We are going to drill there no matter what, so just get it over with already.
Sometimes you need to satisfy a bonehead that their boneheaded plan doesn't work before being able to get them on board with a real plan.
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Some further thoughts:
Reports today from oil analysts, and stock analysts like Gartman and Schork, continue to state that the year-end plunge in oil inventories was mostly planned – due to tax planning for the avoidance of taxes on the unrealized appreciation of inventory. If so, one would presume that oil imports would pick up early in the New Year, following normal seasonal patterns. US oil imports actually did have a very good month in January 2010 after a poor December 2009, but that appears unlikely to reoccur in 2011, if OPEC oil tanker tracker, Oil Movements, is right – it does not see any pickup in OPEC imports into the US early on in 2011. Further, shipping reports for VLCCs indicate most all of oil exports from the Mideast in the next weeks are headed for the Far East, indicating the surge in Chinese oil demand starting in later November 2010 has not moderated much.
Elsewhere, despite gasoline supplies in the Northeast stabilizing last week, the Colonial Pipeline will still be fully allocated, that is shipping the maximum amount of gasoline, into the second week of 2011.
theoildrum.com |
