[awash]

The world's oil traders and US oil companies are gaming the system, and the US Senate and House are complicit by holding dog-n-pony hearings.


There is substantial evidence that the large amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased [oil] prices.' On May 13, the price of a barrel of oil briefly hit a record of $126.98 on the New York Mercantile Exchange The reason was ostensibly that Iran was cutting oil production. But there is no gas shortage. So why are prices still going up?
We do know that refineries in the U.S. again cut back their utilization to 85%. That's down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%, only because they're trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. Yet despite the reduced refinery runs, the EIA said, the U.S. managed to put another 800,000 barrels of gasoline in stock. The American Petroleum Institute put the gas gain at 1.4 million barrels. The point is that neither organization is in disagreement that gasoline was added into our active stocks; it's just a question of exactly how much.

The May 8 report from Oil Movements, a British company that tracks oil shipments worldwide, shows that oil in transit on the high seas is quite strong; almost every category of shipment is running higher than it was a year ago. The one exception was oil shipments to the West during the previous 30 days. Even there, on page three of that report, comes the cryptic line, 'In the West, a big share of any [oil] stock building done this year has happened offshore, out of sight.'

Oil Movements' Roy Mason qualified that line: 'Oil in temporary floating storage offshore is hard to pin down, and we don't have useful info on that. Whenever this happens it generates market noise—and we don't hear any!'

On May 2, Bloomberg had reported that Iran is again storing its heavy crude on tankers in the Persian Gulf because the country has run out of onshore storage tanks while awaiting buyers. Further, Saudi Arabia has extended discounts on its sour crudes to $7.45 for Arabian Heavy. Doesn't sound like there's any real supply problem with that grade of crude, does it?

[Cashmere]

Why do people come to this site and post this kind of garbage on post 1?

If you want to believe that PO doesn't exist, go to a PO debunking site and have a blast.

In any event, you're certainly not going to have any effect whatsoever on the folks who live on this site.

Newbz! Gotta love em.

[Twilight]

You know who is gaming the system? The morons who have a two hour commute and have chosen to do it in a 20mpg vehicle their whole lives. You want someone to blame, look there. Oil companies are gouging us, boohoo.

[americandream]

Ooooooo....it's a big conspiracyyyy!!! They're out to get us!!!!!
The Martians are on the way!!!

Go get a brain dude! And while you're at it, use the fcukking thing!

[DeepOil]

We may have put 800,000 barrels into stock, but what's the demand look like? We have to import finished gasoline to keep up with demand, and this week, imports were low. Duh!

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('awash', '[')b]The world's oil traders and US oil companies are gaming the system, and the US Senate and House are complicit by holding dog-n-pony hearings.


There is substantial evidence that the large amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased [oil] prices.' On May 13, the price of a barrel of oil briefly hit a record of $126.98 on the New York Mercantile Exchange The reason was ostensibly that Iran was cutting oil production. But there is no gas shortage. So why are prices still going up?
We do know that refineries in the U.S. again cut back their utilization to 85%. That's down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%, only because they're trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. Yet despite the reduced refinery runs, the EIA said, the U.S. managed to put another 800,000 barrels of gasoline in stock. The American Petroleum Institute put the gas gain at 1.4 million barrels. The point is that neither organization is in disagreement that gasoline was added into our active stocks; it's just a question of exactly how much.

The May 8 report from Oil Movements, a British company that tracks oil shipments worldwide, shows that oil in transit on the high seas is quite strong; almost every category of shipment is running higher than it was a year ago. The one exception was oil shipments to the West during the previous 30 days. Even there, on page three of that report, comes the cryptic line, 'In the West, a big share of any [oil] stock building done this year has happened offshore, out of sight.'

Oil Movements' Roy Mason qualified that line: 'Oil in temporary floating storage offshore is hard to pin down, and we don't have useful info on that. Whenever this happens it generates market noise—and we don't hear any!'

On May 2, Bloomberg had reported that Iran is again storing its heavy crude on tankers in the Persian Gulf because the country has run out of onshore storage tanks while awaiting buyers. Further, Saudi Arabia has extended discounts on its sour crudes to $7.45 for Arabian Heavy. Doesn't sound like there's any real supply problem with that grade of crude, does it?

[joewp]

That's an article from last week's Business Week

Here's another part of it:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Bloomberg had reported that Iran is again storing its heavy crude on tankers in the Persian Gulf because the country has run out of onshore storage tanks while awaiting buyers. Further, Saudi Arabia has extended discounts on its sour crudes to $7.45 for Arabian Heavy. Doesn't sound like there's any real supply problem with that grade of crude, does it?

[Windmills]

I think there's substantial evidence that a finite resource cannot be consumed at an increasing rate for an infinite amount of time.