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spanone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 06:42 PM
Original message
Oil Hits a High; Some See $4 Gas by Spring


~snip~Gasoline prices, which for months lagged the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts fearing they could hit $4 a gallon by spring. Diesel is hitting new records daily and oil closed at an all-time high on Tuesday of $100.88 a barrel.

The increases could not come at a worse time for the economy. With growth slowing, high energy prices that were once easily absorbed by consumers are now more likely to act as a drag on household budgets, leaving people with less money to spend elsewhere. These costs could exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, piling a fresh energy shock on top of the turmoil in credit and housing.

“The effect of high oil prices today could be the difference between having a recession and not having a recession,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard University economist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/business/26gas-web.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
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rcsl1998 Donating Member (501 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 06:51 PM
Response to Original message
1. Yet, Reserves Are At A 14 Year High... nt
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JFN1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:36 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Can you source this?
It will help me win an argument with a rightie friend of mine
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SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:44 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. here are a few sources
US Govt has no plans to stop adding emergency oil
Reuters - 7 hours ago
"Before buying additional reserves, DOE will conduct a market assessment and make a determination whether it is a reasonable time to issue a solicitation," ...
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/1-0&fp=47c41702d8296b60&ei=D7LER5XIA4z2qgOwlvmABg&url=http%3A//www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26332466&cid=1137116618&sig2=NL62kSjkTUH316zaMWBjzA
...........................................................
Senate Panel to Review Use Of Oil Stockpile by the DOE Wall Street Journal
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/1-1&fp=47c41702d8296b60&ei=D7LER5XIA4z2qgOwlvmABg&url=http%3A//online.wsj.com/article/SB120390889103489717.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj&cid=1137116618&sig2=TKInooWwpLUMDW4VgvhYUQ
..................................
all 4 news articles »
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1137116618
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Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:57 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. Stupid's been stuffing the Strategic Oil Reserve for 7 years
undoubtedly thinking he's going to use it for his next war when the rest of the world shuts off the tap. He sure doesn't give a shit about releasing it to drive prices down so that people in the north don't have to choose between food and heat, which was its intended purpose when Carter set it up.

Using the SOR the way it was set up to be used broke OPEC and kept prices low for decades. Then oily men got power and will undoubtedly try to use it in a witless and ultimately ineffective grab at the reserves under the ground in other countries.
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Jack_DeLeon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 03:18 AM
Response to Reply #7
19. IMO that is a good thing...
Edited on Wed Feb-27-08 03:19 AM by Jack_DeLeon
Not necessarily that we should start another war, but the Strategic Reserve should be saved for a national emergency like a large military attack against us or incase other nations do cut us of.

It should not be used for economic purposes.

Alot of Americans just plain waste too much gas, driving gas guzzlers, commuting too damn far, idling in traffic. We as a country need to change and hopefully after the election we can get new policys that will force us to do so in a not so painful way. However the Strategic Reserve should not be wasted just so that we can drive around with $2.50 gas online instead of $3.50 gas, because it would just go to waste as people keep chugging along as if it were business as usual until it ran out.

Higher gas prices force us to deal with the consequences of our wasteful lifestyle, its unfortunate that the poorest people have to suffer that burden the most, but hopefullying things can be changed after the election.
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Strelnikov_ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:33 AM
Response to Reply #19
21. I agree
For a nation that imports 67% of its petroleum, and consumes 25% of the worlds petroleum export market, we should be packing in every barrel we can for a rainy day.

It could mean the difference between the center holding versus . .
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penguin7 Donating Member (962 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:38 AM
Response to Reply #19
22. "A Large Military Attack Against Us?"
By whom may I ask. Why are people in this country so stinking paranoid?
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Hydra Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:00 PM
Response to Original message
2. Well, this ought to get fun
I wonder when I'll not be able to afford the gas I need to get to work...oh, wait. I can't already.
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whistle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:25 PM
Response to Original message
3. Price manipulation back in September 2007 and price manipulation now
<snip>
The Oil Scam Driving Crude Over $80
September 18, 2007


It’s not just the activity at the NYMEX that’s disturbing but the way the press, who used to be the kind of people who would check out a story, simply publishes whatever spin the wealthy sponsors and their PR firms feed them.

You can’t blame the media. The only word they love more than "crisis" is "scandal", but not when the scandal involves one of their advertisers. So, given the choice, they go with "energy crisis" over "oil scam" but let’s dig a little deeper than the average reporter….

The story you’ll hear for Monday is that oil rose $1.10 to $80 on tight supply concerns that drove prices higher.

The truth is that 257M barrels of oil for October delivery were bought AND sold on the NYMEX, which started the day with 197,270,000 barrels yet, strangely, suspiciously even, at the end of the day orders for oil to be delivered in October dropped to 171,442,000 barrels. How can the price of something go up while the demand for it goes down? COLLUSION. Collusion is "a secret understanding, esp. for a fraudulent purpose." Yep, that pretty much describes it in a nutshell.

If it were just the one day, we could brush it off as a fluke and consider our evidence circumstantial but here’s how trading went for the past 4 days since Tuesday, when I predicted that NYMEX traders had no intention of accepting the 289M barrels they had ordered for October:



In the Boston Tea Party, patriots dumped tea into the ocean rather than pay the taxes imposed by a distant king. On the NYMEX, they dumped 117M barrels that were scheduled to be delivered to the American people - BARRELS YOU ALREADY PAID FOR AT THE PUMP - in order to create a bogus shortage so you can pay record high oil prices to a distant sheik.

This isn’t just criminal behavior - it’s TREASONOUS!

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” - Marcus Cicero

Look at what’s happening. I said on Tuesday:



I will tell you right now that these traders, including the 296M barrels that were bid yesterday to drive oil to record highs, HAVE NO INTENTION WHATSOVER OF ACCEPTING DELIVERY. In fact I will tell you right now that in the next 7 days, they will cancel over 220M of those barrels, which will then be measured in the October inventory reports as a "shortage" and they will then concentrate on rolling over the November contracts, currently with 248Mb on order at $76.26.

So what did happen? Well the traitors cancelled 117,558,000 barrels of oil, that’s 29M barrels A WEEK from October delivery in order for the weather girl on CNBC to be able to tell you every Wednesday at 10:30 how tight supplies are. And what did they do with those barrels? The same thing they do every month, they "roll" the contracts into the forward months, creating a false demand there for oil they never intend to accept delivery of and they have done it EVERY SINGLE MONTH FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS!

But, they are not done…

Were the traitors traders to accept delivery of the 171,442,000 barrels of oil that are still open today, BARRELS THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY BILLED YOU FOR, it would create the biggest glut of oil in US history and crash the oil markets. So these traitors traders will, in the next 4 days, CANCEL ANOTHER 130M BARRELS OF CRUDE and slip the majority of them into the next 3 months in order to create the perception that there is, simultaneously, a record demand and a tight current supply.

It is all smoke and mirrors and it all takes place on the open trading floor of the NYMEX and it’s costing the American people (at $80 a barrel) $1.6Bn per day, $11.2Bn per week, $48Bn a month - $576Bn a year. It’s a crime that’s committed right under our noses and the only way to stop it is for you to get mad!

Unlike Howard Beale in Network, I DO want you to write to your Congressman and I do know what you should say. Tell them you are as mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore! Send them this article and tell them to LOOK. Don’t take my word for it just start to watch, have an aide make a chart and keep track. Call a few traders in to testify and explain the logic of their actions. Ask why we are being charged for oil at "front-month" prices when they manipulate the front month contracts by ordering barrels they have absolutely no intention of accepting delivery of.

Ask them who gives the orders, ask them who signs the checks - FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Speaking of Exxon, that company’s market cap jumped back up to $495Bn again and may touch the magic $500Bn mark again tomorrow so let’s see if they can hold it despite the fact that refining margins, which saved them last quarter, are down over 30%.

Exxon is the world’s most valuable company. They don’t cure cancer, they don’t feed people, they only employ 106,000 people - 1/4 McDonald’s 465,000 (market cap $65Bn), 1/3 of Sears’ 352,000 ($18Bn), less than 1/2 of Home Depot’s 247,000 ($70Bn), 30% less than P&Gs 138,000 ($212Bn), a little more than 1/3 of GM’s 280,000 workers ($20Bn) and just over Pfizer’s 98,000 (167Bn). So we richly reward the company that rakes in the most money - through whatever means necessary, while employing relatively few people…

Is this the map for America’s future?

It’s a microcosm of what’s going wrong with our society. Manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas and XOM gains over $300Bn in market cap since 2002 without hiring more workers or producing more oil - it’s the same people, doing the same work for MUCH more money. How much more? In 2002 XOM billed us $200Bn for their products. In 2006, they produced 5% LESS product and billed us $165Bn more ($365Bn) for it and their operating income jumped from $17.5Bn (8.7%) to $67.4Bn (18.5%).

That’s right, they raised the price of oil from $30 a barrel to $80 a barrel, costing the American people over $500Bn a year in retail product prices in order to make an exta $50Bn. God bless us, everyone!

"War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself."

<link> http://seekingalpha.com/article/47541-the-oil-scam-driving-crude-over-80

UK's Brent Crude Oil fund buys oil futures on margin at just 3.2% and can out buy any bidder and thus drive up prices. Don't ask me how, but they do, I guess with cheap money and the above tactics :shrug:

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high density Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:41 PM
Response to Original message
5. A couple weeks ago they were forecasting lower gas prices
And a couple weeks before that they were forecasting exactly what they're forecasting now.

So in other words these idiots have no clue WTF they are talking about.
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spanone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 07:59 PM
Response to Original message
8. there's not one successful bu$h* policy....not one...failures all
foreign
domestic
economic
et al
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TahitiNut Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 08:02 PM
Response to Original message
9. We're lucky if it only goes to $4/gal for "summer driving season."
:shrug:
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gristy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 10:28 PM
Response to Original message
10. $3.83 here today
At least that's what I saw on the sign as I rode by on my bike. :)
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marmar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 10:56 PM
Response to Reply #10
13. Yeah, gas prices are murder in your part of the country.....
I visited SF last May and rented a car to drive down to Monterey for the day, and was in tears after I filled it up to return to the car rental office.

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Dukkha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 10:46 PM
Response to Original message
11. this has been predicted the last 3 years and hasn't yet
I'm not saying it won't just that I'm skeptical about these reports every few months alarming the public on the $4.00 gas. And then of course we'll have yet another call for an investigation that will go nowhere and yield nothing. An investigation should start in Cheney's big secret safe in his office.
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 10:53 PM
Response to Original message
12. I said $5/gal. by Dec. of last year. Off a couple of months so far.
I think we will find out soon how many months off, but I bet not by many.
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dysfunctional press Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 11:03 PM
Response to Reply #12
14. my guess was/is $5/gal. by christmas 2008.
we'll see if they try to keep it in check for the election.
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-26-08 11:04 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. They know they're going down. They going to squeeze every nickle while they can.
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Lugnut Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 01:23 AM
Response to Reply #15
16. That's my theory.
When prices went up last year they still came up with excuses for it. These days they don't even try to bullshit the public.
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margotb822 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 01:50 AM
Response to Original message
17. $3.39 in CA
Just saw that tonight and almost drove off the road. I guess I should have filled up when it was $3.12.

Isn't price gouging like this illegal? I know that business is in business to make money, but at the sake of the rest of America? The whole economy took a nose dive into the pockets of big oil. Absolutely sickening...
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Auggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:44 AM
Response to Reply #17
25. Paid $3.47 last night in north S.F. Bay
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MrSlayer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 02:42 AM
Response to Original message
18. This is the benefit of living in a big city.
I don't own a car because I don't need one. Everything I need is within walking distance and I live one block away from the subway which can get me anywhere in the city for two bucks. Gas prices don't really effect me much.
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SammyWinstonJack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:40 AM
Response to Reply #18
23. You don't buy groceries or anything else?
High/er oil prices make everything more expensive.
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Supersedeas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:26 AM
Response to Original message
20. how much more Bush legacy can we stand??
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DemReadingDU Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:42 AM
Response to Original message
24. $3.19 SW Ohio
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penguin7 Donating Member (962 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:50 AM
Response to Original message
26. Gasoline and Food are going higher or Housing is coming down
Housing got way too high because of low interest rates.

We now have a choice, bail out the housing market with inflation. Every plan out there to save the housing market will raise the price of food and gasoline. Or we try to save the dollar and let the housing market come back to reality.
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Spacemom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 10:53 AM
Response to Original message
27. Funny how that's about the time we'll be getting "stimulus" checks
why don't they just call it what it is, a 150 billion dollar oil company stimulus.

We're squeezed to the limit now, I don't know where it's going to come from to pay $4 a gallon. :(
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CatholicEdHead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-27-08 02:49 PM
Response to Original message
28. Here in MN we just raised our gas tax for the first time in 20 years
over the GOP Gov's veto. The GOP will say the gas tax is the reason we will see $4/gal, even though it is only a nickel/gallon increase. The fluctuations are so much more just from oil company profits that this slight cost of living matience update is a pittance.
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