A collection of articles on Oil, The Economist

[Cardinal]

The US News seems to feed fear. Looking for balance.

+1, good stuff. I've been buying the Economist lately because it's the anti-USAToday. Facts instead of hype, numbers instead of emotion.

 

[superfly]

index speculation

Oil price hike blamed on ‘index speculation’

Posted: June 3, 2008, 2:59 PM EST


Institutional investors and investment banks have driven up the cost of oil through “index speculation,” according to testimony given at a hearing today before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
“There’s definitely a speculative bubble that is superimposed on the fundamental trends of supply and demand (in the crude oil market),” said billionaire investor George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management. The effect of that speculative bubble is a 50% premium on oil prices, said Michael Greenberger, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a past director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the CFTC. Mark N. Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, said one-third of the cost of a barrel of oil is from the economics of production, one-third due to oil cartels and one-third due to speculators. “Two-thirds, simply put, is baloney,” Mr. Cooper said, referring to oil cartels and speculators. “Raising margin requirements … would be justified because it would discourage speculation, and speculation can distort prices,” Mr. Soros said.







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[superfly]

index speculation

Check out this:

http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/audio_video/052008video.ram

 

[Superpilot92]

Congress Eyeing Oil Speculators

Legislation designed to limit speculation in oil markets was introduced last week by Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The bill would require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to review trading practices of institutional investors and impose limits on how much those investors can hold in a given market.

In an interview on Sunday, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., noted that the U.S. should continue to look at additional production, offshore production and renewable energy, but that speculation played a large part in high prices.

“We ought to get at this,” Sen. Dorgan, a member of the Senate’s energy committee, said on Fox News Sunday. “There’s an orgy of speculation going on in the futures markets, an unbelievable amount of speculation by hedge funds, investment banks and others, that are driving up prices.”

Oil prices have more than doubled in a year to a record $139.12 a barrel on June 6.

 

[clr4theapch]

Wars have been started over less, much less.. What pi$$ me off off was presented a few weeks back on 60 minutes, where by they reported that Iraq has earned and holds in its own bank accounts over 600Billion dollars in oil profits just since the was started. The US spent how many billions of our tax payer money for this war??

Jmho, but Iraq should be refunding every penny and paying the bill for us to fix there culture.. or we own the oil and sell it here for $. 35 cents a gallon like it there in Irag today.. and take care if them forever, we are probably going to be there along time anyway.. but moving back on track...

All these speculators are doing to oil the exact same thing that was done in the housing market.. it will bust, and recend, but not as long as we demand more and more everyday at $4 a Gal, as long as we Americans keep consuming oil at the current rate, the prices will not go down anytime soon.. from a sellers point of view, why should they?

I drive the interstates everyday like all of you and if your like me, you get doors blown off running while at 70 to 75.. since we as a whole dont seem to be able to control our speeds and thus gas consumption, I Unfortunatley feel the govenment should re-impose a slower national speed limit just like they did before, back to the double nickle 55.

Hey, I dont like driving that slow, but I have done my own experiment at "hyper driving" and my new Ford with a 6 cyc gets 33% better gas milage than EPA doing it..running at 58 mph I got 33.2 with the a/c running in hot weather.
It seems to my pea brain that this would have a hugh impact if everyone were forced to just leave for work earlier and slow down.. How would this sudden loss of demand on the world market affect prices then.. I dont know?

 

[~~~^~~~]

Check out this:

http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/audio_video/052008video.ram

Thank you. Well worth the listen.