Ah, the wonders of supply and demand. On the supply side:
Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Sunday the world oil market was oversupplied and that the kingdom had reduced production in March due to weak crude demand.
Oil consumers have urged OPEC to quickly add supply to the market to quell the rally in crude prices that has taken oil to its highest level in two and a half years amid unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.
Other OPEC ministers have insisted the market is well supplied and there is nothing the group can do to stop prices from going higher while there is not unmet demand for crude.
“The market is overbalanced… Our production in February was 9.125 million barrels per day (bpd), in March it was 8.292 million bpd. In April we don’t know yet, probably a little higher than March. The reason I gave you these numbers is to show you that the market is oversupplied,” Naimi told reporters.
And now for the demand side:
Oil prices are roiling financial markets, hitting the economy and forcing investors to re-examine their portfolios.
Oil prices closed at $109.66 a barrel on Friday, up more than 31% in the last year. They’re up from a low of about $84 in February and are near levels not seen since September 2008, before the economic downturn.
Behind the spike in oil: Unrest in the Middle East, including continued fighting in Libya. At the same time, improving economic prospects in the U.S., including a slowly improving job market, suggest that energy demand will grow.
Crude is due for a pullback. There is a ton of speculation in that commodity right now which is holding the price above $100.
My first wife had her own theory to explain spikes in oil pricing.
It was called: “A bee farts in Ireland“.
My current wife has her own theory to explain spikes in oil pricing.
Its called: “Those greedy [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] are [expletive deleted] ripping us off again, [expletive deleted,] because they’re all in it together, [expletive deleted] the [expletive deleted] antitrust laws, and they [expletive deleted] can.
They’re both right…
Apparently Eric on FOX News is an inbred idiot who you shouldn’t trust with a burnt out match.
Is “Eric from FOX News” friends with “Bi-curious from Seattle”?
I drive a Ford Ranger, paid $4000 for a 2003. Runs great. I hardly can see the gas guage move, compared to my old full size pickup.
I really don’t care about the price of gas, since I don’t use that much. Hell, let it go to ten bucks, and clear off all the traffic congestion, for all I care. I will still get where I NEED to go, and like everybody else, I don’t NEED to go that many places. Yes, food prices will go up, etc, but I don’t give a shit. My house is paid off, I have gold in my safe, and am ready to suck up Obama’s Social Security checks and use Medicare. So I don’t give a crap.
Saudis cut production, but pump prices still rising?
That is a typical liberal idiot headline, like the New York Times, prison population continues to rise despite drop in crime.
As the dollar declines, oil prices, and most commodity prices will increase.
Let print a few trillion more and see what happens.
Ruger LCR said,
“My house is paid off, I have gold in my safe, and am ready to suck up Obama’s Social Security checks and use Medicare. So I don’t give a crap.”
So in other words, “Fuck you, I’ve got mine.”
Well at least you are honest about it.
Trump. Total Shill.
“Donald Trump’s Advisor: Democrat Turned Trump Loyalist(Obama Supporter, Nonbirther is Trump’s Brain)
The man behind Donald Trump’s possible 2012 presidential campaign is a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Not only that, but Michael Cohen, an executive at the Trump Organization who doubles as Trump’s chief political advisor, once volunteered for 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and worked for a Democratic member of Congress.”
# 11 2 2 The Head
If you were trying to suggest Donald Trump is secretly a Democrat: FAIL!
If you weren’t: FAIL!
Step right up and try yer luck again. You can’t lose every time…
…well, maybe you could…
The wonders of rampant capitalism stoked with just a tiny amount of fear…..ooooh oil production has peaked…..oooh kadaffy farted. The taxpayers have your backs Wall Street…don’t worry. They haven’t failed you since the 30’s.
RSweeney is the only one who’s clued in. Oil commodity prices have to be taken together with the foreign exchange position. Government energy policy has bugger all to do with your pump price.
I just checked last week’s numbers. Options and future volumes are way down but the implied volatility is going up fast.
Translation: oil traders have no frickin’ clue which direction the price is going to go. An $8 weekly swing means a crap shoot for the next sessions.
Cause and effect:
Dollar goes down -> oil-producers raise prices(cut production) to get the same value for their barrel of oil.
Some reasons oil is going up.
FUD out of the middle east. I don’t think Obama and Clinton have done jack to help here.
Rampant speculation.
Quantitative easing=there are a lot of green backs out there somewhere.
Many economies are doing better than the US and the EU. As a rule nanny states have stagnant economies.
And thus the totally unregulated speculators will make tons of money running up the price of oil. Anyone remember what happened the last time they did this very exact same thing? In 2008? The price got so high people stopped buying. Stopped buying SUVs and low-mileage cars. The car makers didn’t have anything to offer as a high-mileage alternative. The car makers almost went out of business. We had to bail them out and protect millions of jobs in the auto industry and their suppliers. This time the impact could be severe, but not as bad as before because, thanks to the bailouts the automakers are in a better position with more high-mileage models available. But the customers have already started cutting back as demand in the U.S. has been going down steadily over the past couple months, making this price runup all the more galling because it is being caused by pure speculation. Sounds like the speculation done by the bankers in the home loans too doesn’t it?
But we must not regulate these people or raise their taxes, we’re broke and can’t afford it.
The only people that should be allowed to buy oil and other commodities are people that can take physical delivery.
Saudi Arabia is cutting production because they have to. Their spare production is a big fat lie. They are using the “glut” excuse to hide the fact that they are past their peak in production, and the 2 million in spare production does not exist.
We over at theoildrum.com have known the KSA spare production numbers were made up for years now, and wikileak memos confirm the US Government has known since 2007.
World crude oil production peaked in 2005, so says the IEA. The world “all liquid fuel” production was at its highest level in 2008, and if no records are broken by 2012, we will be past “Peak Oil”, if we aren’t already.
That means every year we will have less oil to go around, even though demand has never been greater. It does not necessarily mean high prices, though as high prices tends to kill the economy causing demand to drop. Worse than high prices is shortages, which will eventually happen in this decade, and every decade after until we learn to live with less oil.
It really does not matter who is in office. There is nothing anyone can do about this. The GOP will blame Obama of course, but if they get in office, they will have no answer at all except throw more money at the oil companies, which will do absolutely nothing.
To our resident/visiting Stock Market Experts:
Have a simple explanation, or better yet a link to something that makes sense, about how the Options market works?
Half the time I read the put/calls even out so speculation has zero effect on the price of oil. Half the time I read that speculation adds an average 15% to the cost of oil. Then another half of the time I read speculation drives the market up and down. You can tell my math skills aren’t up too snuff, but I’d still like a real simple explanation as “balance out” makes sense but I doubt there would be a “market” for it if it wasn’t “fixed.”
Meanwhile, what we need is a strong leader for this country, the type that only the Pukes would nominate and vote for. Like Trump. You know: “the cure for our oil problem is to tell OPEC they need to supply more and supply it at a lower cost. If you tell them in the right way, they will listen.” Same with China. Seems we don’t know how powerful our debtor status is.
The ignorant fail to see that oil prices is driven by more than supply and demand. The teabagger loons think the silver bullet is to drill for more oil here as if that capacity magically gets allocated to US consumption. Wrong, bozos. It goes to the world markets where its price us regulated by speculation and the next war in the Arab cesspool.
This is why we need to ween you from the oil tit. Instead green, renewable, alternative and variety of energy sources will allow choices to supress energy costs. I’m pro choice and u should be too. Next time it cost $10 bucks to haul your fat ass to Walmart, you might think about why sucking on the oil tit is not a good idea in the long term.
Here is what I think is some further evidence of the oil markets being out of kilter. WTI crude is much lower currently than Brent crude ($12-$14), where historically it is even or slightly ahead of Brent. Here is link to spot prices:
http://wtrg.com/daily/oilandgasspot.html#Brent
Oversupply of is the not correct solution do down the oil prices and also it is only a temporary solution not for a long time so we need to develop other resources to bring the oil prices down for a long time and also if we use less oil that means if we used to go to our offices by using bikes not using cars and especially if we use electric bikes and electric cars then we down oil prices for a long time and also we can control pollution will also bring good effect on nature.
What are the arguments against advancing renewable energy tech? Renewable energy reduces our dependence on foreign providers, and decreases the likelihood of vast market fluctuations that cripple our economy. Additionally, there’s limited environmental impact. Forget global warming for a moment. Think about something tangible. Oil spills kill eco systems that are invaluable to other industries and radiation from nuclear leaks lead to death and birth defects. If you don’t believe that? I suggest you walk around with a cellphone strapped to your head at all times and drink some motor oil. Renewable is the future. Lets leave crude oil in the crude ages.
# 25 Tech Deporter said, “Renewable is the future.”
Yes it is. IF you want to live in grass hut and access the internet with an abacus. What we need now is a visionary in charge of the country. Someone who can see that nukes are the near term solution. And I don’t mean those dangerous uranium waste manufactories. (Do you know, we settled on the most dangerous type of reactor not because it was good for the people but because it produced all the plutonium the military needed for bombs?) We need to establish new reactor types like the thorium reactor that produces no waste, shuts down when the power is interrupted and can even dispose of the waste from old reactors. Thorium is dirt cheap (it’s generally considered mining waste and discarded!) They are safe, far less expensive to build and run than the current models and don’t even require the huge containment domes.
Then drill baby drill. Our Fearless Leader would drive legislation that declared our oil reserves a national resource so that it would be reserved for us. The Arabs could do the same thing but they won’t. They need the money.
Once we had cheap, plentiful energy, then there would be time to fully investigate and establish green, renewable tech. Solar, wind, what ever. In truth, we cannot sustain our lifestyle and get green at the same time.
I think it was Bobbo who suggested we could replace the interstate highway surfaces with solar panels and run the country. I feel certain the cost of doing that would be far higher than building a bunch of safe nukes. I know the knee jerks among you will immediately jump on the no nukes bandwagon. “Look at what happened in Japan!!!” To you, I suggest a quick google search for thorium reactors.
Energy independence is the only way to put America back on track. You want electric cars? Great, burn some filthy coal or oil to generate it. Or nice safe clean nukes?
Prices have NO RELATION TO SUPPLY – ONLY TO THE MONOPOLISTS ***GREED*** !!! And since they have BOUGHT THE GOVERNMENT, ***NOTHING WILL BE DONE ABOUT IT*** !!!
Up Yours, Consumers !!!
PAY OR WALK !!!
#21, bobbo, while there are certainly ways to imagine how speculative buying of oil futures could lead to some increase in prices, but that certainly isn’t the whole story. Refineries undergoing periodic maintenance in a region can have significant effects on the prices and demand for certain types of crude due to the vastly different refining requirements between different densities and sulfur content.
bobbo, it’s not stocks or securities we’re talking about here. It mainly commodity futures with some options. Completely different kettle of fish.
Wall St types tend to lose their shirts on commodities.
Thorium Reactors huh? Thats why I come here, to be educated.
No link or simple explanation on how the effect of the options market on the price of commodities huh? Well, sometimes you have to educate yourself. I’ve looked, just have to look some more. Gee. Perhaps a college textbook?
Well, this will be the limit of my study on the issue of Thorium Reactors. animby–it seems the benefits you listed all need a little bit more work. Not exactly lying, just accelerating the truth?
http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.php/Debate:_Thorium_based_nuclear_energy
at # 20 ArianeB RE: PEAK OIL
My thoughts are that peak oil is a scam in order to create an artificial scarcity and hence be able to restrict, sanction and Increase the cost per barrel. more than they do already.
“They” control what we know, via status quo academia and controlled institutions and education, the only way to escape is to think for yourself.
Alternative energy by the likes of Tesla and john searle is where it’s at, but until the cartels stop giving these heros “two to the head”, we are not going to see cheap fuel anytime soon.
Peak oil hmmm, doubt it. but we still need to find clean and cheap energy that cant be throttled by the powers that be.
(apart from abiogenic/abiotic oil)an unsubstantiated explanation is:
We make more blood- so does the earth. maybe?
we are both carbon based and at times full of hot air. both support parasites and constantly under the control of others. no too many differences.