Well folks, looks like oil prices have surrendered about $8 a barrel in the last two days. At this pace we won't need to worry about high oil prices and gasoline prices and such. Time to move on and go back to everyday living as it used to be. I was talking with my girlfriend about this yesterday and made a prediction that during the month of May we will see sub $100 oil and by the fall it will be $80-ish.

Excellent! Now I can fire up that hummer again! Sweet.

Well folks, looks like oil prices have surrendered about $8 a barrel in the last two days. At this pace we won't need to worry about high oil prices and gasoline prices and such. Time to move on and go back to everyday living as it used to be. I was talking with my girlfriend about this yesterday and made a prediction that during the month of May we will see sub $100 oil and by the fall it will be $80-ish.

Are you saying that because you think the dollar will strengthen? or because higher prices have reduce demand? or because you see domestic production increasing due to higher prices?

There may be a case for this, but I was curious what your indicators are that brings you to this conclusion, other than a two day retraction in oil prices.

I think that prices might decline because of:

-An increase in supply (I anticipate that OPEC will provide a slight increase in quota's as well as an unauthorized increase by individual countries (ie. cheating on the quotas to increase revenue.) )

-Decrease in consumer demand as a result of higher fuel prices over the summer travel period. This includes a decrease in automotive travel as well as air travel.

-Increase in domestic oil stocks (the government has been adding to their inventories during the beginning of this year.)

-Potential, marginal, strengthening of the US dollar.

Just as a side note, I don't actually think that development of the Volt or other battery (alternative energy sourced) vehicles should stop. I'd like to see options available in the market so that consumers can choose how they want to fuel their vehicles.

I just think there might be some relief in the future from higher fuel costs.

For all those who think it's time to relax and go back to our old ways, please take a short time out of your life to watch the following entertaining videos by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett. If you watch the whole thing he covers everything, from great speeches of the past to tar sands. Very compelling stuff. After watching the videos you still think the US can relax and go back to business as usual I may question your sanity. Enjoy! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lwkyqFB-34


There are seven parts in all. Man, YouTube is amazing!

The price of oil has risen by about $90 per barrel in the past several years. If it goes down $10 or $20 in the next few months, don't go thinking that we didn't just get royally f'ed. ;)

Well folks, looks like oil prices have surrendered about $8 a barrel in the last two days. At this pace we won't need to worry about high oil prices and gasoline prices and such. Time to move on and go back to everyday living as it used to be. I was talking with my girlfriend about this yesterday and made a prediction that during the month of May we will see sub $100 oil and by the fall it will be $80-ish.

Big Deal!

Crude pricing is just like gasoline prices at the pump. When they go up they go up 5-cent's a day. When they come down they come down 1-cent a week. The cycle goes on-and-on-and-on. In the end the trend is a steep upward curve on the graph with some little down tweeks in it now and then. Let's just get this Volt on the road, find an E-85 station to fuel it with, and drive by that Chevron station while we thumb our nose at them.

Historical Oil Price Chart. Data gathered from the US DOE.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i173/djmphcl/crudeoilprices.gif

This is a slightly better chart showing both nominal and inflation adjusted price to 2007 dollars

yup, i just put that other chart together myself because i couldn't find anything that shows the huge jump between oil prices in 2007 and 2008...

i'm sure a chart showing the value of the dollar would look like the oil price chart upside down... :(

yup, i just put that other chart together myself because i couldn't find anything that shows the huge jump between oil prices in 2007 and 2008...

i'm sure a chart showing the value of the dollar would look like the oil price chart upside down... :(

check out this article:

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/10/does_dollar_wea_1.html

I have something for the gentleman who thinks gas prices will settle to think about.

1.) China is booming. Like it or hate it. Like TNT kinda booming. They have a new, never seen before thirst for oil. When you have a population of billions, and suddenly they can afford to drive?
2.) India is also doing well, along with their $2500 Nano car. Think about how many new cars are going to be on the road now.


The demand is soaring.
Is it possible they will temporarily / artificially lower prices here? Sure. Will it last? No.

Is it possible they will temporarily / artificially lower prices here? Sure. Will it last? No.

First of all, who are "They"? Second of all, if indeed the world has hit peak oil or the capacity has plateaued (either artificially - to protect the world from overpopulation and increased oil addition or because we just can't get out anymore) the price of oil will not be able to be lowered for long enough to stop the energy transition even if "They" existed. Since oil is a commodity and is traded freely we can all get together and purchase oil if we feel there's a concerted effort to drive down the price. It will be satisfying to watch "them" taking vast amounts of money out of the oil commodity market in a vane attempt to lower prices and just as they feel all proud of themselves because the cost starts to go down significantly the "Keep oil at the real cost" coalition dumps massive funds back into the market rising the price back up or even a bit more. "They" would then have lost billions and got nothing for it. Very satisfying indeed. I truly hope there are not people out there that think they can play those kinds of games in an attempt to keep the world addicted to oil. If there are then hopefully there are others that will balance that out. Honestly, there are probably only a few people in the world who know the truth of how everything is connected. I for one hope that these extremely intelligent people are trying to do the right thing. Hey, they probably have children too!

While the above does cross my mind once in a while I do not dwell on it because I’m hopeful that technologies being developed all over the world will eventually win over. Once technology is out of the bag it's hard to keep people from finding a way to use it, eventually. Look at China and the Internet or Iran and nuclear power. Today, Germans are powering up their grid with solar, Israel is starting to build out an entire EV infrastructure, GM is betting the farm on lithium-ion technology and the list goes on. To those wanting to hold it back I say get your fingers out of the cracking dam and help chip it way! There is so much more business to be done when the world has plentiful and renewable energy.

" They "

I don't like to use that word - but in the that context it could take so many forms that I chose an all-inclusive term.

Government bodies can lower the price of oil by lowering taxes.
Oil companies could lower prices by lowering their earnings. A few billion here could lower the price significantly.

All I am suggesting by this post is that if " They " whomever they are, lower the price of oil - it will only be temporary and the move away from fossil fuel dependency will occur.

Well folks, looks like oil prices have surrendered about $8 a barrel in the last two days. At this pace we won't need to worry about high oil prices and gasoline prices and such. Time to move on and go back to everyday living as it used to be. I was talking with my girlfriend about this yesterday and made a prediction that during the month of May we will see sub $100 oil and by the fall it will be $80-ish. 21 days later and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I don't pretend to know what oil was going to do on May 1st either. But when Big Oil CEO's are going before Congress and testify that the cost of a barrel should be around $45-$65 (I think one said higher, but still way less than current) the high price just seems unsustainable.

My understanding is that the high price is primarily due to a weaker dollar and tons of speculation. Looking at the nice charts folks have made, isn't this just a bubble that is going to hemorrhage at some point (unless of course, their speculation comes to fruition and we are hit with a disaster)? Am I wrong for saying this sounds like dot-com all over again?

Question: If oil plummets from $130/barrel to like $75 in like a 3 week period... who are the losers? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would be primarily foreign speculators trading against the weak dollar loosing their shirts, right? Would that not also immediately strengthen the dollar? The bulls would run like crazy on Wall Street too. So, the next question would be: when can this happen? I suppose these speculators aren't like "day traders" and are in it for a longer haul. Good news in the Middle East or Venezuela would be a speculator's worst nightmare, but could be a while before that happens.

Again, I really don't know what I'm talking about, so feel free to correct me.

-Nuttzy :cool:

My understanding is that the high price is primarily due to a weaker dollar and tons of speculation. Looking at the nice charts folks have made, isn't this just a bubble that is going to hemorrhage at some point (unless of course, their speculation comes to fruition and we are hit with a disaster)? Am I wrong for saying this sounds like dot-com all over again?

Question: If oil plummets from $130/barrel to like $75 in like a 3 week period... who are the losers? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would be primarily foreign speculators trading against the weak dollar loosing their shirts, right? Would that not also immediately strengthen the dollar? The bulls would run like crazy on Wall Street too. So, the next question would be: when can this happen? I suppose these speculators aren't like "day traders" and are in it for a longer haul. Good news in the Middle East or Venezuela would be a speculator's worst nightmare, but could be a while before that happens.
-Nuttzy :cool:

There are a lot of real economic stimulus for oil and most commodities to rise long term, but what we have seen in the past 6 months is largely due to the dollar and speculation as you mentioned. There is a tremendous amount of retirement money floating around in investment vehicles. The was acknowledged back in the 90's as a major contributing factor to the internet bubble, then the housing bubble, and today the commodities bubble. Commodities of all types are continuing to see their prices rises rapidly even as demand has softened. The slow down in the US is affecting other countries too, not least of which is China. Goldman Sachs recently predicted oil coukd get to $200/barrel. In my observation these pronouncements are made after they and their good investers are fully vested. They are looking to give the markets a booster shot before starting to divest.

I think you've got the losers pegged pretty well.

I think the perception that if oil drops to $80/barrel then gas prices will fall back significantly is misguided. Refined gas cost lag speculative oil markets by a bit. I believe steady $80/barrell will translate into about $3.50 at the pump. There is pretty good data to support the cost structures and mine is just a rough guess, so it would be interesting to here what someone has to say that knows the data.

I think that prices might decline because of:

-An increase in supply (I anticipate that OPEC will provide a slight increase in quota's as well as an unauthorized increase by individual countries (ie. cheating on the quotas to increase revenue.) )

-Decrease in consumer demand as a result of higher fuel prices over the summer travel period. This includes a decrease in automotive travel as well as air travel.

-Increase in domestic oil stocks (the government has been adding to their inventories during the beginning of this year.)

-Potential, marginal, strengthening of the US dollar.

It's the speculators in the futures market driving the price of oil. There is no supply and demand problem. The reason a lot of people feel the price of oil may drop is because some Senators successfully amended the farm bill to close what has been called the enron loophole. This puts the futures market where they trade oil and gas under CFTC regulation.

http://www.carllevin.com/news/2006/05/08/gas-prices-levin-statement-at-the-democratic-policy-committee-hearing-on-oversight-of-energy-trading/

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/916086/

I think the perception that if oil drops to $80/barrel then gas prices will fall back significantly is misguided. Refined gas cost lag speculative oil markets by a bit. I believe steady $80/barrell will translate into about $3.50 at the pump. Ouch. I thought we could hope for better. But still, a drop from nearly $4.00 down to $3.50 will create a boom to someone I would think. Who are the winners going to be (besides all of us)? If you could find an industry that isn't getting spanked so hard right now (or already bottomed out) and will sky rocket after the bubble bursts.... could be a fun game to play :D I'd go with FedEx and UPS or something like that.

-Nuttzy :cool:

now its over $120 barrel and $4.50 at the pump. Summer has just started..... The diesel used to move all the gas around is well over $5 gallon in California. Let's check back after Labor Day.....

There will always be some speculators. It part of the market. What funny is that many people are talking about this now. I smell fear and many are on a witchhunt for oil speculators. This is just a proof that People are still addcit to oil and still have not chnage thier way to do something about it. All this sound like peak oil to me.

There will always be some speculators. It part of the market. What funny is that many people are talking about this now. I smell fear and many are on a witchhunt for oil speculators. This is just a proof that People are still addcit to oil and still have not chnage thier way to do something about it. All this sound like peak oil to me.

You are right. People will be led kicking and screaming to change. They only respond to pain. It's really that simple.

Well, it's coming up on fall and as I had mentioned we're seeing oil prices in the $80 range. I expected a much more gradual decline in oil prices. I did not expcet to see them fall quite as much as they did recently and up until late this summer it didn't look good for my $80 prediction.

Well, it's coming up on fall and as I had mentioned we're seeing oil prices in the $80 range. I expected a much more gradual decline in oil prices. I did not expcet to see them fall quite as much as they did recently and up until late this summer it didn't look good for my $80 prediction.




The prices might fall even further. The global economy is definitely going into recession so the demand for oil will go way down. Since we still have the ability to pump 85 mbd of petroleum the price will drop until supply is cut. OPEC will probably cut more production soon.

One thing I'm concerned about is that this cut in production is going to mask the data on the world's ability to produce petroleum. It might look like peak oil but is not or it might be peak oil but people will think it was just a reduction in demand. This might cause policy makers to be less aggressive in transitioning away from petroleum. It's my feeling that the economic problems we are experiencing is mostly due to the world's inability to increase petroleum supply as fast as we could in the past. We bumped up against the supply, it caused the massive and rapid increased in prices and that was the straw that broke the housing bubble. Our economy was running in debt and on the edge. Like a taxi driver that can just barely feed his family. When the price of his gasoline goes up something has to give. He has no savings to fall back on and it becomes a crisis situation. That's the sorry state of our economy.

I feel the only way for us to get out of this trap is to work hard on fixing our energy infrastructure. If we don't, there is very little chance we will be able to get out of this mess. We should not expect things to just get better without fixing our severe energy problems. Capital is just flowing out of our country to pay for our massive petroleum addiction and we are unable to balance that trade deficit. Japan imports an even higher percentage of their energy but they are very efficient in using that energy to create wealth.

I have been wondering if a better way to define the strength of an economy is by the amount of generated wealth per energy unit used. That's why I feel we need to go on a massive mission to increase the efficiency of our energy use as well as making our energy resources more stable. We can only do that by having more control over our resources. No, I don't mean by increasing our military forces in the Middle East. I mean by harnessing our own natural energy resources.

For those who say it's too expensive I have to point to our current situation. What's more costly than what we are going through now? Maybe alternative energy systems are more expensive than imported oil from the Middle East but if you include the cost from the instability of that resource I think our own natural resources (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) are much cheaper. Not to mention all of this will create jobs right here in the US and that we can then sell these technologies around the world and possibly (probably) get to positive trade balances. This will then bring wealth back into our country.

Let's plug the hole so we can start to fill our bucket again.

Texas,

That was a very good response that basically says what has happened to us. Without a solution to our imminent energy problem, there will be no recovery in housing or the markets. As soon as they think it is ok, the energy dilema will show back up and tear everything down again.

The worlds ignorance of energy supplies is what caused this mess, and their continued ignorance of just blaming this problem on housing assures us the problem will not go away, because our economy is 100% tied to energy. I always laugh at economists that say we will have a turnaround in the economy and all will be well in a few years, while they blissfully ignore our energy problem, which is the sole cause if the downward spiral.

The problem will just keep destroying the markets until people take off their rose colored glasses and start seeing the real problems. Then if we ever wean ourselves off petroleum before the inevitable decline, then maybe we can see a tunraround.

But not until whe world in general wakes up.

But that isn't how it works, the government doesn't make any real reduction with a tax reduction on oil, it would only be pennies a gallon. Oil companies are NOT to blame, it is the investors that wildly drive the value of oil way above the true market price to avoid investing their money in the stock markets because the markets are so weak. They invest in commodities, artificially raise the price, the dollar falls, gas rises, then simply repeat that formula over & over till we are above $4.00 again, prices are only down because investors lost confidence investing in commodities for the time being. Watch the markets, ANY slight change or camel fart reported in the news, and oil quietly spikes $5-$6 a barrel on profit taking. All while breaking the back of the economy, which we all almost saw happen, and possibly still is.




" They "

I don't like to use that word - but in the that context it could take so many forms that I chose an all-inclusive term.

Government bodies can lower the price of oil by lowering taxes.
Oil companies could lower prices by lowering their earnings. A few billion here could lower the price significantly.

All I am suggesting by this post is that if " They " whomever they are, lower the price of oil - it will only be temporary and the move away from fossil fuel dependency will occur.

京搬家公司-北京搬家-搬家-搬家公司-北京彩虹搬家有限公司010-65487131.北京搬家公司成立于1995年。经过几年的不懈努力，北京搬家 (http://www.bjbanjiags.com.cn/)开拓发展，现已成为北京规模最大的专业搬家（物流）公司。北京搬家公司 (http://www.bjbanjiags.com.cn/)现拥有各类运输车辆、机械设备270多台套。公司以居民、搬家公司 (http://www.bjbanjiags.com.cn/)企事业搬场为基础，建立起市内物流、工业搬场、北京搬家公司 (http://www.bjbanjiags.com.cn/)小件快运、集装箱运输、北京搬家公司 (http://www.bjbanjiags.com.cn/)市内配送为主的运输体系，培育出一批经验丰富的专业队伍，对所有高档家具，钢琴、空调、大型机器等具有技 术精通专业人员拆装及搬动，一条龙服务。提供长、短运输