I suspect that Big Oil's stragerty

...is to gouge the populace before the November election because after the vote they aren't going to have any dog in this fight.

What say you?

And that they did NOTHING about it.

in 1979-1980, when there was amazing tension in the Middle East (and the specter of Vietnam and the real threat of the USSR keeping us from attacking Iran militarily to get our people home) ...

Gee, now they're trying to blame Congress for the high gas prices and the inflation ...

Double standards ... the best buddy of the Repukeniconvict party ...

...that happened to electricity in California (remember Enron's gouging in 2000?)

But, the GOP-controlled media was able to blame the Democratic governor (Gray Davis) who was recalled in order to have a hand-picked GOP name/face involved in the secret Enron meetings the year prior installed as governor.

I hope you're right that people will remember.

But, I am skeptical that another mess will come of this and those responsible will not be held accountable.

it's a case of national ENRON, if you ask me.

a constraint to their ability to increase supply meaningfully.

My heart breaks for them.

because peak oil will be kinder to oil companies than it will be to us.

This "lack of supply" occurs EVERY Summer like clockwork!

hmm...why would demand increase in the summertime...hmm...could there be a reason for that?


Nah, nothing changes in the summertime. Must be a conspiracy.

and to put your addled fevered at rest, no, I don't work for an oil company.


I just read http://www.theoildrum.com every day.

just a part of being on the plateau right before the cliff of peak oil.

Nowhere on earth is the demand for oil not being met yet price continues to increase. This fact is to the Guiding Hand as a Ouija board is to modern statistics. See the problem? If there is no unmet demand it indicates that supply is adequate and price is suppose to remain stable. You see that happening? If you don't then you may safely assume there are other factors operating in the market. This is not the result of Peak Oil, this is a bubble in price caused by market manipulation - plain and simple. Like all other bubbles, this one will burst.

These oil contracts are expiring at some point in the future, and traders are taking into account the likely state of demand and supply at that point when arriving at the price. Yes, demand is being met, but spare capacity for oil exporters is nil at this point, or very close to nil, and traders know that, and are taking it into account when buying and selling oil futures contracts.

Most countries are pumping flat out, and production in all those countries has either plateaued (Saudi Arabia and OPEC) or is in terminal decline (Britain's North Sea operations, Mexico's Cantarell and, most disturbingly, maybe even Russia).

At a certain price, you will shortly begin to see some demand destruction in world markets, if we're not already seeing signs of it.

...not Saudi Arabia which maintains a hedge of 2M barrels a day in reserve capacity (see recent episode of President Insane grovels in front of his Saudi pimps).

and there is ample reason to doubt them.

between 2-3 million a day currently. Even if estimates are wrong by 50%, that's at least 3 million barrels a day of slack that's being kept in the ground.

I also wonder how Plame's network being blown effected its work with Aramco, which would have given us insight into Saudi Arabia's true oil capacity.

I bet a war with Iran would keep even more production off the market. Wonder how all these things effect the price of oil?

Haven't even begun to discuss the effects of unregulated hedge fund trading of oil on the commodity market floor.

I don't buy the peak oil argument, not at this point in time at least. There's rampant fraud and price gouging going on and zero transparancy of the process, that's what's effecting the price of gasoline.

thus higher prices for the oil.

.

no lack of supply, and no increase in the cost of production. The only thing that has increased is their profits, and if your chart those, they correspond exactly to the increase in price.

We've never seen price increases this dramatic before, even in the OPEC fiasco in the 70's when there were actual supply shortages (although it was subsequently proven that that was created by them too). This is clearly a case of an industry gouging the public with the approval of the government.

futures contracts. read about them.

by the sheeple.

Oil companies are not gouging anybody, they're selling a product that speculators and the normal workings of the commodities markets have inflated.

Watch the financial news. One day something will go way up because there is news that X is going to happen. The very next day, they talk about Y as if X had never happened, and prices change wildly again. The whole place has amnesia.

How many times have oil prices gone up because of a threat to supply in Nigeria? That problem never resolves itself, yet they can use it as a reason to bid up prices higher. Same with summer driving season, Chinese demand and hurricane season. They can use those excuses over and over.

The market is a herd mentality. Somebody is going to take a tremendous profit one of these days as they decide which investment has a better potential return than oil does at its current level. When the big money moves out of oil contracts and back into the stock market, the dollar, anything else in a serious way, oil prices will drop $50.00 a barrel. All of the idiots who decided to invest at the top lose their money. When oil drops like that gold will, silver will, etc.

Meanwhile, the big money has moved into a new industry at the lows, and the cycle begins again.

No, I don't think this is political. No matter who takes office in 2009, they don't have a way to influence the prices that are set internationally. It's not like the USA is the only country paying these prices.

The USA is the only country paying these prices that has had their currency so devalued though.

designed to make your vacation road trips a pleasure for shareholders too. My mom says they won't go down until after Labor Day.

Laughing with you - not at you. I'm the world's worst at spelling using a keyboard - brain running at different speed from fingers.

....

I had one of those but the wheels fell off. :)

and then they will have another excuse as to why oil is going up up up
and a reason why we all have to shut up about it cause 'we're at war'

Maybe from $5.00/gallon down to $3.99, hoping everyone will say "happy days are here again" and vote for McCain.

The CEOs might have hinted at that with their up-cycle down-cycle comment.

Marsha Blackburn R-TN had the nerve to blame Dems for the high price of oil and gas.



http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=202101623

they will say anything. The truth has nothing to do with what comes out of their mouths. Bill Sali, was on a radio program this morning saying how he thought that the free market dictates the gas prices and therefore it's fair. You know who's pocket he's in.