Crude oil closed at $36 a barrel today

[jpak]

Down $111 from this summer's high.

Speculators???

Pshaw...

[Muttocracy]

1. so it's going to be back at the level when Bush took office and this was just a bad dream? nt

[jpak]

3. Yup- that wily ol' Chimp sure jawboned himself up quite a shitstorm on teh NYMEX

Will he pay us our money back?

:shrug:

[tridim]

4. I noticed that Bush never talks about gas prices now..

He's hoping people forget how much money the oil industry stole from us during his term.

[Democrats_win]

2. Down with oil! Up yours, Bush!

[phantom power]

5. Speculation in the reverse direction?

[jpak]

6. More like absence of speculators

n/t

[GliderGuider]

7. It seems that only the speculators had any idea of the true value of a barrel of oil

Nobody who actually uses the stuff has the faintest clue.
:shrug:

[jpak]

8. They destroyed the world's economy for their own gain

but that's OK - doomers get a chubby from shit like that...

[GliderGuider]

9. As opposed to you cornucopians who want to suck the Earth dry at $36/bbl?

They were doing you and the world a favour by slowing down the consumption of oil and making alternatives attractive. Now anybody with some pocket change can just slurp it up, and nobody gives a shit about alt.energy. That's some chubby.

[phantom power]

10. All six of my nipples are tingling!

[jpak]

11. as opposed to the straw man - "you cornucopians"

:rofl:

I guarantee global oil consumption is down - not up - because of this.

[phantom power]

12. Sure, and if oil consumption starts to rise again...

the price will spike again. And give the economy another haircut. Rinse, repeat.

[GliderGuider]

14. "Doomers" aren't made of straw?

So you think that global oil consumption is down because the price dropped? Or did the price drop because the global economy tanked and people with serious money went and put it somewhere safer than oil contracts?

[Terry in Austin]

13. To use the popular phrase: So what?

Seriously.

What's the message here? What do you think it confirms?

[phantom power]

15. jpak is taking a dig at people (like me)...

who think that the spring price spike was due mostly to peak oil fundamentals, as opposed to mostly speculation.

[Terry in Austin]

17. I hear you there

Got some of that on me, as well. During the runup, I laughed my tail off when somebody here suggested oil would go back down below $80. :dunce:

Still, I think that over a longer term, "spike" will prove to be a misnomer, in that it implies a short, anomalous event. A dramatic up and down such as we've just seen is very likely to be followed by another and another, so what we're probably looking at here is a market gone chaotic. Just like Simmons and others predicted it would as oil production plateaus and starts to decline.

Plenty of speculative frenzy in all of that, of course, but most likely the speculation is more a symptom of the chaos than a cause.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. We'll find out soon enough

There are seasonal cycles in consumption: At the moment, coal and NG are starting to peak as people hit the heaters: Heating oil use will also be up, but since it's not usually piped on demand it's tricky to pin down. On the other hand transport fuel (like gasoline) consumption drops as people aren't heading out for vacations, day trips or nights out so much: The trend usually reverses in the spring, with consumption picking up a little around Christmas and New Year and really climbing in March.

So, if the price blows through the roof next spring/summer, we know why. If it doesn't, and consumption is still up, then we can point the finger at market shenanigans...

[IrateCitizen]

16. When a speculative bubble pops, prices don't return to "normal".

They swing past it in the opposite direction, then recover to that "normal" level in relatively short time.

Inside of 2 years we'll see oil in the $80-$100 range again, mark my words. The speculative bubble is the result of peak oil fundamentals playing out quite predictably. Several more will follow over the next decade.

[madokie]

18. just filled up at $1.56 a gallon

price of gas went all the way down to $1.46 a month or so ago and at the time oil was trading for sixty something a barrel. No doubt we've taking a fucking on gas prices but I hope the price doesn't drop any more because it will only encourage more of the same shit thats gotten us in this mess to begin with.