Ouch

If you see the little oil price chart thingy on the right then I feel your pain. I have not seen movement like this since the internet boom in the latter half of the 1990's. It was pretty hard not to make money and the movements were strikingly similar.

If the price of oil keeps going like it has been we are gearing up for $150/barrel within the next month.

Gas is never too far behind in this. Although the prices move so fast you tend to forget whether gas has caught up or not. From my observation, and this is just a guess, but it seems to be that the price of gas is going up roughly $.05 per gallon with every $2 increase in the price of oil. The national average of $3.81 today was based on $128 and change....assuming we were caught up.

If my theory is correct then if the price closes above $131 then we should expect $3.86 in the very near term. Of course locally can be very different. We're heading back to northern NY Friday morning and the tank is full but as I told Shelly last week I would be very suprised if gas in Northern NY WASN'T above $4/gal.

Heating oil futures are now running almost $3.90 which means to top off your tank in the basement should be in the nieghborhood of $4.60???

Have you put down that gass guzzeling heavy duty truck or super sized SUV yet? Put a fork in her, she's done.

Green will be the next status symbol.

New Disturbed - Inside The Fire

Another 3am Crisis Call

When the phone rings at 3am as another crisis occures, do you want someone who can't get coffee out of a machine to answer? I think NOT.

Hillary Clinton - Gas Tax and the Economy

1. $.185 tax "holiday": In reality this amounts to:
a. 10 gallon fill up $1.85 per fill up or a savings up to x 12 weeks = $22.2
b. same car filled up 2x/week x 12 weeks = $44.4
c. SUV taking 16 gal on fill up once a week would realize a net savings = $35.52
d. same vehicle filling up 2x/week x 12 weeks = $71.04

So for the "average" family the savings would be about $30 over three months. For families that drive more, have bigger cars, SUVs and trucks and therefore fill up more frequently the savings would be significantly more. Truckers would save even more on top of that.

John McCain says with the $$ a family saves at the pump it may be able to allow them a "better meal" for themselves or their children.

yeah "up size that happy meal for me"

The amount saved at the pump upon fill up is insignificant and it does nothing to change driving habits.

2. "Finally get tough with OPEC. OPEC is basically a monopoly of the 13 biggest oil producing nations" "OPEC has refused to increase production"...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro-energy-oil-production

a.#1 Saudi Arabia: 9,475,000 bbl/day
#2 * Russia: 9,400,000 bbl/day
#3 * United States: 7,610,000 bbl/day
#4 Iran: 3,979,000 bbl/day
#5 * China: 3,631,000 bbl/day
#6 * Mexico: 3,420,000 bbl/day
#7 * Norway: 3,220,000 bbl/day
#8 * Canada: 3,135,000 bbl/day
#9 Venezuela: 3,081,000 bbl/day
#10 UAE 2,540,000 bbl/day
#11 Nigeria: 2,451,000 bbl/day
#12 Kuwait: 2,418,000 bbl/day
#13 Iraq: 2,130,000 bbl/day

* Denotes NON OPEC member Countries

Two question here:

a. Is OPEC daily output of crude oil at or near its peak? If they are at or near their peak output capacity then there is nothing they can do?
b. It has been stated for several years now that refining capacity here in the US is very close to capacity. We have as a country built a new refinery in 20-30 years. Even if we were to see more oil flow we do not have enough spare capacity to handle it. The emerging markets of China, Russia and India are using increasingly more and more oil and their economies continue to expand.

3. "Make sure the price of oil is not being determined by speculators and market manipulator's"

Certainly we don't want any laws broken but in light of the flight of investment away from the US Housing market it seems that investment in not only oil but commodities is a rational trend when considering the continued expansion of emerging markets which are mainly Russia, China and India.