The European Union's member countries have a 90-day strategic reserve on hand. The US, which consumes one third of the 76 million barrels produced daily worldwide, has a 40-day stockpile as a cushion against wildcat action.
The United States is using its war on international terror to help secure a future alternative to Gulf fossil fuel from the almost untapped reserves of the Caspian Basin, estimated at a staggering 70 billion barrels.
According to my math, this means at present usage, there is about a 3000 year supply of oil under the Caspian Basin. This is based on the British usage of a Billion being one million million. Am I off by a couple of orders of magnatude here? If it is only a thousand million, as Americans define a billion, it is only three years supply, which, while nice, doesn't seem as important.
The bases in Kazhakstan occupied by US troops to seal Afghanistan's northern border will not be abandoned readily
Like most of these pundits, mentally deficient in the geography department.
"The Saudis have also not forgotten the most expensive lesson they learned in 1973. Almost all of their oil revenues had been invested in the West.
"When the embargo they embraced so willingly began to bite, the crash inflicted a decade's worth of damage on their Wall Street portfolios.
The Saudi Princes studied at the London School of economics, and they knew the pounding our economy would take from their phoney oil shortages. So they sell stocks and mutual funds invested in American stocks and buy bonds and mutual funds invested in Bonds before creating a phoney oil shortage. This is the selling at highs part of the equation.
Today and yesterday all of my wives and my mutual funds invested in stocks took a hammering as Wall Street became scared of a pending oil shortage and the increasing oil prices. Our bond mutual funds had two excellent days.
If I can figure that out and have enough diversity in our mutual funds, the Opecker Princes are way ahead with their investment bankers trained at the London School of Economics.
When Iran stormed our embassy and another oil shortage came up with Carter screwing up the economy with his tax and spend congress, interest rates jumped to over 12 to 14%. If you parked your money in good cds, you made 12 to 14% per year on your money while everyone was dying in the stock market. You can bet that the Saudi Princes were in the cash and bond markets here and in Euro areas.
If you are a Saudi Opecker Prince, and know when you are increasing the supply of oil that will reverse the economic recession due to the shortage, you cash out of your cds and bonds and buy stock at low rates. You didn't have to be a genius in picking stocks just buy the S&P 500 index in as many mutual funds as you can buy which are record lows, (the buying low part of the basic equation). Then, set back and watch your funds increase in value at 12 to 15% per year for years, until you are ready to cause another recession in America. Then, you cashout and go back to bonds and cds!