[Revi]

I think these lower prices will leave a lot of oil in the ground. Why produce it if it costs more to get it than you make? I was thinking the other day that all this hard to get stuff may be left where it's at.

The spike may have caused people to change their habits already. We cut our fossil fuel use by over half in our household.

The government should tax the remaining fossil fuels and let us and the market figure out a way to heat our homes and drive around.

That's what happened to whale oil when it became clear that you could do the same thing with petroleum:

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/misc/b ... leoil.html

[shortonoil]

sjn said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he US is "borrowing" that money from creditor nations who know they aren't going to get it back, but they also share the desire to keep the system going. If that stops before the unwinding ends, all bets are off.

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bratticus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')hey created their own reality and YOUR'S too.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bratticus', '
')

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'I')f you want any kind of dialogue [sic], or would like me to address a specific question, I'd be happy to, but first you'll have to explain the venom behind your peculiar remarks.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bratticus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'I')f you want any kind of dialogue [sic], or would like me to address a specific question, I'd be happy to, but first you'll have to explain the venom behind your peculiar remarks.

[bratticus]

No, TB, I'm not going to un-ignore you to read your reply.
[hr]
To make this post worth while here, have another picture of the $147/barrel spike that came within $53/barrel of the low end of the Goldman Sachs $200 - $250/barrel SuperSpike price.
[url=http://oilnergy.com/1opost.htm]
(you can even click the picture to get to the source I'm getting it from)[/url]

Plus a closer look at the peak

[threadbear]

I can't for the life of me understand Bratticus's response to my post, nor did I request he remove me from his ignore list. Odd.

A helpful rule of thumb is to be very wary of the conclusions any particular poster comes to, if it radiates from a belief system that is wedded to ego. A sure sign of this is the attempted dismissal of alternative points of view, with insults, and an inability to acknowledge error.

The Goldman Sachs superspike has definitely been reached, for the time being. Anyone thinking that price rises will be anything but a reflection of a weakening dollar, going into the immediate future, witness gold's action today.

[bratticus]

I can't hear you...

[threadbear]

Hijacked his own thread. Cool.

[mattduke]

reuters

[bratticus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y Kristina Cooke

... At its last meeting in mid-December, the FOMC lowered its target for benchmark overnight rates to zero to 0.25 percent and said it was focusing its efforts to support the economy on actions to unclog frozen credit markets. ...

[copious.abundance]

Sure to be a popular topic.

>>> Forbes <<<
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Did Goldman Goose Oil?
Christopher Helman and Liz Moyer, 03.25.09, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated April 13, 2009
How Goldman Sachs was at the center of the oil trading fiasco that bankrupted pipeline giant Semgroup.

When oil prices spiked last summer to $147 a barrel, the biggest corporate casualty was oil pipeline giant Semgroup Holdings, a $14 billion (sales) private firm in Tulsa, Okla. It had racked up $2.4 billion in trading losses betting that oil prices would go down, including $290 million in accounts personally managed by then chief executive Thomas Kivisto. Its short positions amounted to the equivalent of 20% of the nation's crude oil inventories. With the credit crunch eliminating any hope of meeting a $500 million margin call, Semgroup filed for bankruptcy on July 22.

But now some of the people involved in cleaning up the financial mess are suggesting that Semgroup's collapse was more than just bad judgment and worse timing. There is evidence of a malevolent hand at work: oil price manipulation by traders orchestrating a short squeeze to push up the price of West Texas Intermediate crude to the point that it would generate fatal losses in Semgroup's accounts.

[...]

Semgroup's troubles mounted in the first quarter of 2008, when it had to post $2 billion in margin to cover losses. Goldman offered to underwrite a $1.5 billion private placement. Kivisto's attorney Tucker and others believe that it was in the Wall Street research for this offering that Semgroup's trading bets became fatally exposed. In April the banks (Merrill Lynch and Citibank were co-underwriters) required that Semgroup submit its trading positions to a stress test, a process one source describes as a "proctology exam." Goldman ended up abandoning the placement as investors balked at braving the liquidity crunch.

Meanwhile the futures markets had gotten wacky. On June 5, with no news catalysts, oil futures spiked $5 a barrel, the biggest one-day jump since the outbreak of the first Gulf war. The next day, on no news, the price jumped another $10 to $138. Traders say that in the days leading up to the $147 peak on July 12 there was the smell of blood in the water. "We just kept bidding the market higher," one trader says.

[...]

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'S')ure to be a popular topic.
On June 5, with no news catalysts, oil futures spiked $5 a barrel, the biggest one-day jump since the outbreak of the first Gulf war. The next day, on no news, the price jumped another $10 to $138. Traders say that in the days leading up to the $147 peak on July 12 there was the smell of blood in the water. "We just kept bidding the market higher," one trader says.

[...]

[AirlinePilot]

Pure and unadulterated Speculation.

I have no doubt that some of these types of moves contributed to the upward climb in price. But the facts also support there were a lot of folks who actually take delivery of crude to make something out of it who had to buy. They were getting squeezed too and waiting even a day or two to buy could cost a lot of extra money to your firm.

Reality is rarely as fanciful as the press makes it out to be.

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'P')ure and unadulterated Speculation.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Take them out and shoot them. Hang them from a lamp post. Boil those in charge in oil. The President puts those same creeps in charge. It is an outrage. He claims he is the only thing between them and the pitchforks. What a sham. Geithner? Summers? Who does Obama think he's fooling?

[Micki]

Don't I just love to hate GovernmentSachs.
Since they converted from being investment bank to commerical bank they need to report their positions and does that make for exciting reading. They have $30.2TRILLION in Derivatives but only $162.4Billion in Assets. That makes them leveraged 186 to 1

[yesplease]

Gosh, it couldn't possibly be that the same banksters who got the Glass-Steagall act repealed pumped and dumped oil above and beyond any supply/demand driven fundamentals. It would be completely out of character, how could they live with themselves?