Posted on 02/22/2011 6:37:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The last time the oil price lost all sense of gravity, as it threatens to again with the price of Brent crude now well north of $100 a barrel, it helped tip the world economy into the deepest recession since the 1930s.
Is history about to repeat itself? Much depends on developments in the Middle East, but things are once more looking perilous.
By adding to energy costs, the effect of high oil prices is to reduce the amount of money for spending on other things, thereby undermining aggregate demand in the wider economy. Eventually a tipping point is reached where confidence collapses. Given what happened as recently as 2008, you would expect OPEC to be acting quickly to prevent the same thing recurring. By raising quotas with dispatch, OPEC might limit any further explosive increase in prices.
The wave of popular protest across North Africa and beyond has put that assumption in doubt. What happens to the world economy is not exactly a priority right now for the autocrats who dominate OPEC. Their focus is instead on survival. The big swing producer, Saudi Arabia, looks particularly vulnerable to further contagion in the region.
With nervousness turning to panic among key producers, this is not an environment conducive to the sort of prompt decision-making necessary to prevent the oil price running out of control again.
If the latest instability in the Middle East wasnt enough excitement for the Energy Institutes traditionally lively annual conference in London this week, theres also the unprecedented divergence in benchmark oil prices to ponder.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
No domestic drilling
"Smart" Diplomacy
(Aided and abetted by 'Rats)
But our anti-american -resident has shut down Gulf drilling, and his zealots in the EPA and trying to do the same for oil and gas drilling in the shale of the mid-west and Texas. They want Americans to suffer so we can be herded onto their trains and taken where they want us to go. It’s been done before by a government who wanted total control in building the ideal society.
The price of oil is rising because the value of the U.S. dollar is falling by almost any objective measure. The price of oil is just one of many manifestations of this decline, and comes on the heels of rising prices for almost every commodity out there (see related articles in recent weeks on record-high prices for silver, copper, nickel, cotton, etc.).
Obama can we drill in Louisiana now? Or, you going to try and force everyone into an electric car? Not going to happen!
A lot of folks can’t understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
~~~
Well, there’s a very simple answer.
~~~
Nobody bothered to check the oil.
~~~
We just didn’t know we were getting low.
~~~
The reason for that is purely geographical.
~~~
Our OIL is located in:
~~~
Alaska
~~~
California
~~~
Coastal Florida
~~~
Coastal Louisiana
~~~
North Dakota
~~~
Wyoming
~~~
Colorado
~~~
Kansas
~~~
Oklahoma
~~~
Pennsylvania
And
Texas
~~~
Our dipsticks are located in DC............
Here is the objective measure
That is for February!
It depends on how long the fires continue to burn in the Middle East. Italy buys a third of Libya’s oil exports. Disruptions in production can have a short and long term effect. Some of the demonstrators in Libya are threatening to blow up the oil wells if Ghadaffi doesn’t step down. If the “revolution” spreads to Saudi Arabia, then all bets are off.
time for Americans to become pro-active by deliberately limiting our gasoline purchases
let them eat sand
Our OIL is located in:
~~~ Alaska ~~~ California ~~~ Coastal Florida ~~~ Coastal Louisiana ~~~ North Dakota ~~~ Wyoming ~~~ Colorado ~~~ Kansas ~~~ Oklahoma ~~~ Pennsylvania And Texas"
"~~~ Our dipsticks are located in DC............ I can't stop laughing.
It's high time people in this country started educating themselves and learned about the direct correlation between those public-sector employees protesting in Wisconsin and the rising price of gasoline at the pump. This is a problem with underlying economic fundamentals, folks.
And anyone who thinks we just need to "drill now" to solve the problem should just consider this: If the U.S. opened more areas for domestic drilling, there's a good chance we'll end up 15-20 years from now with more domestic production and higher oil prices -- with much of our domestically-produced oil exported to foreign countries.
” let them eat sand “
And what are you planning to eat when gasoline/diesel-driven farm equipment stands idle, and there’s no petrochemical fertilizers available for the fields, anyway - and what crops do manage to get grown and harvested can’t make it to your table because the fuel for the trucks to transport them is prohibitively expensive, if available at all??
But that’s okay, because we sure showed them darned ay-rabs, didn’t we???
Sorry, dblshot . . . I meant your SECOND to last sentence.
I second the motion.
I hope you're right, but the following is key.
Like stock and bond markets, oil has become financialised. These days, it appears as much the playground of hedge funds, hoarders and financial investors as genuine users and producers.
I think we're in another oil bubble and it won't pop until Bernanke turns off the money faucet. Of course, if he does that, the economy will crash again. For that reason, I suspect the money will continue to flow and $4 gas isn't far away.
Aw yes buggiest vs biggest, good old spell checker, but come to think of it or economy does have a lot of bugs in it.
OPEC is afraid that they may loose their grip and are getting what they can now.
OPEC is an illegal cartel. I have never understood why we allow them to exist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.