The heavy price of $100 a barrel

Britain could see an
Npower is expected to announce double-digit increases in gas and electricity prices today and motorists have been hit by record petrol prices, adding to a squeeze on incomes from softening house prices and higher credit costs.

Kris Voorspools, analyst at Fortis Bank in Brussels, insists a shortage of the right kind of refining capacity coupled with increasing demand will keep prices high. “Oil could rise further from here. It’s simply supply-and-demand fundamentals,” he argues. It comes at a time when the UK North Sea is already in faster decline than oil companies expected and Germany’s Energy Watch Group is predicting that global supplies will fall sharply from 2009.

Guardian