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I Thought It Was The "Speculators"?

Mike

Well-known member
OPEC ministers cut output at meeting


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Oct 24, 6:17 AM (ET)


(AP) Saudi Arabia Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, arrives for an...
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VIENNA, Austria (AP) - OPEC oil ministers have decided to cut output by 1.5 million barrels a day as of next month.

The oil cartel's move is an attempt to shore up sagging prices. Crude is selling for 50 percent less than this year's historic heights because the worldwide economic crisis has put a huge crimp in demand for crude.

OPEC's statement says prices have witnessed a dramatic collapse unprecedented in speed and magnitude.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Mike said:
OPEC ministers cut output at meeting


Email this Story

Oct 24, 6:17 AM (ET)


(AP) Saudi Arabia Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, arrives for an...
Full Image


VIENNA, Austria (AP) - OPEC oil ministers have decided to cut output by 1.5 million barrels a day as of next month.

The oil cartel's move is an attempt to shore up sagging prices. Crude is selling for 50 percent less than this year's historic heights because the worldwide economic crisis has put a huge crimp in demand for crude.

OPEC's statement says prices have witnessed a dramatic collapse unprecedented in speed and magnitude.

Well good for OPEC. it will also put a huge crimp in their pocket books for now anyway. They certainly can't sell what they don't have on the market.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Big deal they had to cut production because they could not sell any more than the market demands. So I suspect they had the storage tanks full and could not pump any more. Sure would have been smart if Bush had sold out of our strategic reverve at 140 and replaced now. What a deal that would have been for Americans.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
I thought I would pass this article on to any one concerns. It was published when everyone was hollaring drill baby, drill.
High Oil Prices:

It's All Speculation
By Ed Wallace Fri Jun 27, 8:08 AM ET

"The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things: an
unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn't really deregulate. Now they're
trapped from unwise regulatory schemes, plus not having addressed the supply
side of issues. They've (Californians) obviously created major problems for
themselves." -- Vice-President Dick Cheney, May 17, 2001, on PBS's Frontline

"Market fundamentals show us that production has not kept pace with growing
demand for oil, resulting in increasing prices and increasingly volatile
prices. There is no evidence that we can find that speculators are driving
futures prices for oil." -- Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, June 21, 2008,
on MSNBC
Today, while energy prices are crushing American families, I think we'd all
benefit by reflecting on what happened with energy in 2001. Seven years ago,
Enron was fleecing California, extorting its people for electricity to the
tune of billions of dollars. As is true today, some voices in the
Administration claimed that supply shortages, not manipulation, formed the
core of California's soaring electricity prices. Yet, now that we know the
whole story of Enron's criminal manipulations, many menbers of the media
have forgotten how in 2001 the White House deflected any blame for
California's suddenly stratospheric electrical costs away from their Houston
friends.

Likewise, our Energy Secretary has a real problem discussing issues with
facts. Like a broken record, he continues to maintain that in no way has
speculation had anything to do with today's high oil prices. No, to hear Sam
Bodman tell it, they are now and always have been caused by too many buyers
chasing too few barrels of oil. But, while that might have been true in
2004, things have changed. And so I give you just one week of news from the
oil market. To be more exact, it's the oil news from the seven days
preceding our Energy Secretary's comments about supply and demand.

It Was Printed in English

"(U.S.) demand for oil over the first five months of the year was off 2.5%*
from last year." -- American Petroleum Institute, June 18, 2008, Associated
Press Online (*Translation: We are using approximately 525,000 fewer barrels
of oil per day.)

"Iran has 15 (oil) supertankers idling in the Persian Gulf capable of
storing more than 30 million barrels of crude." -- Bloomberg, June 16, 2008

"Thunder Horse started pumping from a single well on Saturday and on
schedule to have the field online by yearend. Thunder Horse alone will
increase overall U.S. oil and gas production by 3.6%. Add British
Petroleum's Atlantis platform that started up last year, and the boost grows
to 6.4%." -- Houston Chronicle, June 16, 2008

"Asian refiners cut West African crude oil imports in June. Asian imports
will fall 36%* to 830,000 barrels a day this month from May's 1.3 million
barrels per day." -- Bloomberg, June 17, 2008 (*Translation: Another 470,000
barrels a day of mostly light sweet crude rejected by the market.)

Saudi Arabia's Role

"Refiners across Asia said on Monday they were not likely to buy more Saudi
crude at current prices, highlighting the kingdom's challenge in attempting
to contain soaring markets by promising extra barrels. The world's top
exporter is set to increase output to 9.7 million barrels per day in July.
The extra 200,000 bpd, if confirmed, would come on top of the 300,000 bpd it
promised to pump this month." -- Livemint (part of the Wall Street Journal
Digital Network), June 16, 2008 (That's another 500,000 barrels of oil
apparently not purchased.)

"Daily shipments of North Sea Brent crude will rise 8.6% in July. Tankers
are set to load 175,097 barrels a day of Brent crude next month, up from
161,300 barrels a day scheduled for June." -- Bloomberg June 9, 2008

"'(U.S.) Drivers Cut Back by 30 Billion Miles:' Americans drove 22 billion
fewer miles from November through April than during the same period in
2006-07, the biggest such drop since the Iranian revolution led to gasoline
supply shortages in 1979-1980." -- USA Today, June 22, 2008

"South Korea's May Oil Consumption Falls on High Price" -- Bloomberg, June
20, 2008

"Faced with increasingly severe fuel shortages and the prospect of power
failures during the summer air conditioning season, the Chinese government
unexpectedly announced a sharp increase* late Thursday night in regulated
prices for gasoline, diesel, and electricity." -- The New York Times, June
20, 2008 (*Translation: Gasoline and diesel prices in China increased by 18%
immediately to cool demand.)

Excess Oil on the Market

Now, just for fun, let's add up all of the excess oil on the market,
resulting either from cutbacks in demand, as in the U.S., Asia, or Korea, or
from surplus production from oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and in the
Gulf of Mexico. Just in the articles I cited, it comes to 1,989,000 barrels
of oil a day. That does not include the upcoming Saudi Khursaniyah field
that will open in August with another 500,000 barrels per day in production.
Some shortage, huh?

And that's just one week of articles. And, to be fair to the oil market and
the spirit of this column, the world did lose some production out of Mexico,
more out of Nigeria; Russian production is down slightly; and the Thunder
Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico, three years late thanks to hurricanes,
is not fully operational as of this writing. But, then again, the surplus
1,989,000 barrels of oil per day we counted did not include what's
potentially in those 15 oil supertankers leased by Iran and parked in the
Persian Gulf. Now is also a good time to note that on June 20, Saudi Arabia
announced that its Khurais oil field would be online by this time next year,
and that would contribute another 1.2 million barrels of oil per day to the
world market.

"Oil Market Hype" as News

Over the past two months in this column, we've discussed how speculation is
distorting the oil market (and that of any commodity with an inelastic
price, such as foods). I discussed how the "dark, unregulated" futures
look-alike markets allowed overbidding of oil contracts with little if any
oversight from regulators. Within a few weeks the Commodities Futures
Trading Commission (CFTC) said it would move to bring those "dark,
unregulated" markets under its oversight in an attempt to bring order to
speculation and bring prices within the guidelines of legitimate supply and
demand. And by the way: "Dark and unregulated" was how both the Senate and
the House referred to ICE Futures OTC. Those adjectives weren't mine.

(ICE Futures OTC refer to the trades made by Intercontinental Exchange and
its subsidiaries in futures and over-the-counter (OTC) commodities, and
derivative financial products in the U.S. and around the world.)

Once the cat was out of the bag, internationally the media started
discussing speculation as the real reason behind today's high oil prices;
major articles ran in the Houston Chronicle and Der Spiegel in Germany. On
hearing about the CFTC's intent to rein in speculators in these unregulated
markets, a vice-president with a Dallas energy firm wrote me to ask: "Do you
feel like the two guys at The Washington Post on the day Nixon resigned?"

The most surprising e-mail came from Chris Cook, a former director of the
London Petroleum Exchange -- now ICE Futures Europe. Cook wrote: "I am
convinced there has been manipulation of the Brent Complex (the term that
defines North Sea Brent crude prices) by ICE members for the last 10 years
at least. I think it is quite likely that the Brent forward price is being
kept artificially high -- which does require deep pockets and accounts for
the continuing barrage of Goldman (Sachs) forecasts and much of the other
oil market hype that passes for news."

Think about what Mr. Cook said: "Oil market hype that passes for news." That
sums up what you hear and read daily about oil.

Can't Touch This!

Since the publication of those columns, however, four senators have
introduced legislation to "close the London Loophole Act," which in fact
validates the reporting. Also worth noting is that, according to the London
Financial Times, ICE Futures Europe "bowed last week to pressure to
introduce position limits for speculative traders." Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of
Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE - News), was quoted in that article as
saying: "At some point, some of the extreme proposals in the Congress would
drive the business out of the U.S. There's no question in my mind that the
capital flows and trading behavior will move quickly offshore."

Let me translate that, too: If we move to bring sanity to the commodity
markets, then those markets will simply go do business where our federal
regulators can't touch them.

And so, while our Energy Secretary continues to blame America's oil crisis
solely on supply and demand instead of speculators, much as Dick Cheney
blamed California instead of Enron in 2001, it takes little research to
verify that no one yet has been denied an oil contract -- and in fact,
refiners around the world are today turning down oil they're being offered.

One last thought on speculation in the oil market. In 2006, 100% of those
who purchased oil contracts lost money because of the market's contango
(meaning spot oil prices were less than the contracted price on the date of
delivery). In the fall of that year, when banks started demanding that
margins be paid on those losing contracts, oil collapsed back to nearly $50
a barrel. In only 18 months, we've forgotten that lesson, too.
 
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