How the "war" affects us.

[trof]

1. I was talking to a builder yesterday. His costs for plywood, when he can get it, have tripled since the invasion of Iraq. "In effect, plywood is rationed now. It's all going to Iraq. The local warehouse can only get 55 sheets a week. I use that much and more in a single house. Do you know how many builders there are in the county? Hundreds."

2. Oil. OPEC oil producers on Wednesday agreed a surprise cut in supplies to defend high crude prices despite the approach of peak winter demand. “I think it is very bullish for oil prices,” said Gary Ross of New York consultancy PIRA Energy. “The hedge funds are short and they will be running for cover. It shows that OPEC cares more about revenue and price than anything else.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/971120.asp?0na=x2204252-

But the biggest wild card remains Iraq, which is sitting on the world’s second-largest pool of proven oil reserves. Output from Iraq’s creaky oil industry reached 2.5 million barrels a day in February before production was halted following the fall of Baghdad in March, when production slowed to a dribble.

Since then, Iraqi oil officials and American advisors have been trying to rebuild capacity, which was further damaged by post-war looting. But so far, Iraq is producing only 1.5 million barrels a day — about 900,000 of which is available for export.
“It’s going to take between three months and six months before we see the Iraqi oil output get to a point to the same level as pre-war,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. “And that will give Iraq about 2 million barrels of export. If we have two million barrels of export, you’ll see oil prices in the low 20s.”

Other analysts are not as optimistic, saying it would be 2005 before Iraqi production reaches pre-war levels. And Gheit noted that a critical, one-million-barrel-a-day pipeline from the oil-rich Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq remains vulnerable to sabotage from a guerilla attack.
“The security for the pipeline is very lacking,” he said. “The situation has to change.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/970177.asp