You Can’t Give the Stuff Away
Remember $147-a-barrel oil? Good times:
The oil markets responded to the less-than-expected impact of Hurricane Gustav by touching off a selling spree, driving the price of oil to a new low in recent months. After losing $10 per barrel in a day, oil finally stabilized at $106 per barrel. OPEC may start adjusting its production to keep the price firm at $100:
Oil prices fell below $106 a barrel Tuesday in Asia — $10 below its close Friday before the Labor Day weekend — as investors shifted their focus to slowing global demand after worries about Hurricane Gustav subsided.
Light, sweet crude for October delivery was trading at $106.03 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange midafternoon in Singapore, and at one point dropped as low as $105.46.
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At the moment, because we import so much of our oil, we remain at the mercy of OPEC. The only way to break that reliance is to massively produce our energy independent of foreign oil, or at least as independent as we can make ourselves. The more we add our own resources, the less money we send abroad, the more jobs we create here, and the weaker OPEC gets. They can only play with the market as long as they control it; with the US mostly out of the global market, OPEC might collapse as its members abandon the cartel and fend for themselves instead.
Aunt Agatha and I have noted several times each that the price started to go down (27% and counting) only after President Bush called for America to get back into the oil production business. Nancy Pelosi threw her body over the La Brea tar pits to show how Democrats act when people call for America’s energy independence—but the damage to OPEC had already been done.
If Putin wants to conquer Asia and Europe, he had better hurry up, while the price can support his reveries of empire.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
September 2, 2008 @ 10:56 am
Sarah Palin is not helping to prop up oil prices either…
- Aggie