Pipeline sabotage pushes oil prices up

Any excuse to raise the price of oil, starting to wonder if the oil companies themselves hire these terrorist.

Well, if everyone stopped driving SUVs and drove smaller cars, we wouldn't need to import so much oil, thereby reducing demand and prices. Instead, too many act like selfish assholes and drive to work in Hummers and Suburbans, increasing consumption and therefore prices.

It's called the law of supply and demand, and we are outstripping the supply with our voracious demand.

I think your S & D theory went out the window last year when commodity traders were raising the price of oil, 6 months in advance of the 07 Hurricane season based on the GW alarmist’s prediction of the worst hurricane season ever in US history.

What the shit. We've got bootlegga, generally on the left side of the spectrum, talking about S&D, and Alta_Redneck, more of the rightward persuasion, saying it's something else. My world has flipped turned upside down.

\Guess I'd better head for Bel Air....

The people who drive Hummers and Suburbans don't give a shit about the price of gas (i would assume being 'rational' spenders).

It's those already driving the Honda Civics, Dodge *insert crap name here*, etc, they're the ones that worry!

LOL

I've always said I'm a centrist...

I'd agree with that. Most North American consumers don't look at anything but the sticker price, therefore operating costs (such as gas) are often overlooked. Besides, if you can afford $100,000 for an H2, who cares if you spend $5000 on gas or $6000?

That's not my point though. Supply and Demand goes much further than some jerk in a Hummer on the QE2.

Right now, the world produces roughly 81 million barrels of oil a day, and we consume about 80.5 million. Therefore, the surplus is very low, so anything affecting supply affects prices almost immediately. When Iraq got invaded/liberated, we lost several million in production right there, further tightening supplies. People think this is entirely the fault of speculators, but the recent rapid rise in oil prices started shortly after Iraq fell. Prices rose again after Katrina because the refineries were under water/damaged. Within a year (after repairs were finished), prices dropped somewhat. Recent fires/shutdowns in upgraders in Canada last winter meant that demand again exceeded supply and prices went up. Now we have the summer driving season, with people going to the lake, camping, to Disneyland, wherever, and demand is up again.

Speculators definitely do affect prices (not how much oil rose when it looked like Israel and/or the US was going to attack Iran a couple of months ago), but they are not the sole cause of rising prices.

The sad fact is that oil fields in the West are declining, meaning we are more reliant than ever on unstable oil sources (like Venezeula, Iraq, Iran, etc), so prices are rising to reflect that. If Wal-Mart had to import its goods across an ocean full of pirates, hurricanes and other problems, the crap there would be far more expensive too. Why do you think the US wants us to get oil sands production up to 5 million barrels from the 1.5 million? So it won't need to get it from crazy assholes like Chavez.

The solution is to either use less oil (dropping demand and therefore prices), or find new suppies in the West, which hasn't been very successful as of late. Small discoveries have been made, but huge finds like Ghabar (Saudi Arabia) or Western Canadian Basin (Alberta) are harder and harder to find. Instead, small, high cost fields are being found, in either unstable nations or in hostile environments (offshore/Arctic). Newfoundland might have a lot of oil, but compared to Saudi Arabia, it costs a fortune to get it.