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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: articwarrior who wrote (31118)	10/25/1998 4:46:00 PM
From: Gameboy	Respond to of 95453

Articwarrior, sorry your chart didn't come through - perhaps you could list the EIA data to which you're referring. Slider, I remember a recent report from EIA (written by Costello) stating that worldwide inventories would have built by 550 million barrels over the past two years. I just don't see it and the EIA's own supply/demand data (which largely ignores the OPEC cutback and totally ignores the loss of marginal stripper wells) shows a net 4th quarter draw of 1.5 mb/d. Unquestionably, OPEC has failed to this point to substantially raise oil prices but they have gained some respect by their degree of compliance with their stated cutback quotas. OPEC spokesmen have repeatedly stated that their goal is $17 Brent (and I'm sure they'd like it higher than that) by the end of October and unless that occurs OPEC has said that it would consider further production cuts. As investors we are somewhat at the mercy of the bean counters, and in the case of crude inventories, and crude supply/demand, it is awfully fuzzy as to who's doing the counting and as to what figures their getting. It requires a lot of discretion to pick through numbers and the opinions, to try to determine what is valid. One thing I know is that OPEC is hurting and will be pulling their foot out of the fire as quickly as possible. I'm willing to bet on OPEC. I remember Ross Perot in recounting his experiences in the Middle East said he never met an Arab he didn't think was smarter that he was, and in my limited experiences, I would tend to agree. Interestingly enough, OPEC is meeting in Capetown this week. Best of luck, Steve