"oil prices leap as hurricane hits Haiti",

[onethatcares]

wtf does Haiti have to do with oil prices? Jeeeeezzzusssonaharley, if that's all it takes to make oil prices go up, we're fucking done, stick a fork in us.

BTW, that was a headline on MSN (microsoftnews).

[NeedleCast]

1. Has nothing to do with Haitti but Gustav appears to be headed for the gulf

and has the potential to intensify into a major hurricane. Luckily it is spending more time over Haitti than anticipated and has dropped down to a medium strength tropical storm. It will re-intensify, the question is, how much.

[lapfog_1]

2. It's not Haiti

It's the expected track, the temp of the Gulf, and those off shore oil wells and on shore refineries.

Once a hurricane gets into the Gulf of Mexico... it's going to make landfall somewhere, and with the temps of the water now, it could make landfall as a much, much stronger storm.

[malaise]

3. Haiti is the least of the problems but the fact that Gustav

barely grazed Haiti's South West coast means that the forecast of a major GOM hurricane is more likely.
A major Gulf hurricane is an oil price disaster. Chants of drill, drill at the Rethug Convention won't be such sweet music.

sp.

[leftofthedial]

4. prices rise on the slightest rumor of any event that any random idiot

can possibly be convinced might inconvenience the oil industry supply chain . . . as if intentional underinvestment in infrastructure, complete lack of regulation, keeping refineries offline even when demand is high, the use of the strategic reserve to inflate prices and massive amounts of floating storage weren't "inconvenient" enough.

On the other hand, gas prices never fall back to the original level when these inconveniences end, and fall only weeks after the price of crude drops significantly.