Here go the oil Speculator's again!

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Originally Posted By: ryansride2017

I wish this chart was extended through 2009 or 2010 to show the affects of the worldwide recession and the high prices in 2008.


Here's a U.S. EIA link to U.S. and world oil demand from 2006 through the third quarter of 2010.

Daily U.S. oil consumption is down 6% over that time period, with the 2nd quarter of 2009 being the lowest (oil demand down 10% from 2006).

Total world oil consumption is up 2.6% from 2006.
 
I told ya we should have shot some speculators.

Now look what happened......$ 107.00 a barrel!
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
I told ya we should have shot some speculators.

Now look what happened......$ 107.00 a barrel!


Do you have any additional information since the last time you claimed speculators were to blame for higher prices?
 
It's actually impossible for speculators to make a real difference in prices. Here's the deal. Commodities contracts are not like stocks. When the contract comes due *somebody* has to take delivery of the product. A speculator might buy a contract, sell it to someone else, who sells it to someone else, etc. The contract might get passed around at various (possibly ridiculous) prices for some time... until the eleventh hour before it comes due. Whoever has the hot potato at that time either has to get rid of it or take delivery on the oil. This puts things right back in the arena of supply and demand. The end buyer, who actually wants the oil, picks the contract that's available at the lowest price.

People who blame speculators for high oil prices simply do not understand how the market works.
 
TR: you tell us who is buying all these oil contracts if it isn't the speculators?

The speculators make a large demand curve when it is not necessary.
This may make temp shortages that are again unnecessary.
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
This may make temp shortages that are again unnecessary.

No. Because at the time that the contract comes due, the end buyer (who is the only one who counts), or his agent, is free to choose whichever contract is available at the best price. Every drop of gasoline that you buy comes from that final transaction, in which the oil actually changes hands in a physical sense.

None of the oil which impacts the price that *you* pay for oil-related products can possibly be affected in any significant way by market speculators. To be sure, they do exist. But they simply cannot affect the price that the ultimate consumers pay.

-Steve
 
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How is that?

If they snatched up all these contracts and got the price to rise of course they are going to want to sell it for as much as they can.

How much choice do you have as the end buyer if no one wants to cut you a bargain deal?

** If they never snatched it all up in a panic to begin the price would be alot lower right now.
 
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The contracts have limited duration. And there are always people holding contracts that they have to get rid of before they come due.

If a single entity, with sufficiently deep pockets, is prepared to take delivery on the oil, then they could affect the end price. But consider that the world oil market is over $250 billion dollars per month. Specifically, what organization are you claiming is doing this? It doesn't work unless you have one entity, or a very small number of entities (3 would be pushing it) working in tandem. (Like the hunt brothers and the silver market in the 70s. But there, the total dollar value of the silver market was only a few billion dollars).

It would be very easy to pinpoint this if it were happening.

And in any case, this entity would not be a "speculator". It would be an entity trying, illegally, to gain control of the market. And it would have to be willing and able to shell out a substantial fraction of $3 trillion a year to do it.

Again, who do you think is doing this? Please be specific.

-Steve
 
Originally Posted By: sbergman27
...Again, who do you think is doing this? Please be specific...


It was (is) the Dukes.
 
Originally Posted By: Samilcar
Originally Posted By: ryansride2017

I wish this chart was extended through 2009 or 2010 to show the affects of the worldwide recession and the high prices in 2008.


Here's a U.S. EIA link to U.S. and world oil demand from 2006 through the third quarter of 2010.

Daily U.S. oil consumption is down 6% over that time period, with the 2nd quarter of 2009 being the lowest (oil demand down 10% from 2006).

Total world oil consumption is up 2.6% from 2006.


This is the perfect example of why we need to produce more of our own energy as a nation, with a goal of some day, total energy independence. Our consumption is down since 2006, and yet we're paying more for gas now (with the exception of a brief period in 2008) than we ever have. It's absolutely ridiculous that our gas prices are dictated by world demand...and speculators of course...
 
Originally Posted By: grampi

This is the perfect example of why we need to produce more of our own energy as a nation, with a goal of some day, total energy independence. Our consumption is down since 2006, and yet we're paying more for gas now (with the exception of a brief period in 2008) than we ever have. It's absolutely ridiculous that our gas prices are dictated by world demand...and speculators of course...

Don't forget LOTS of printed money.
 
So the US should only be a part of "The World" when it suits them? And be isolationist when it doesn't? That is not possible when 70% of the US's energy is imported from other locales. When I was growing up in the 70's, that number was about 40%. We had an "energy crisis" then, and vowed we were going to do something to get loose from foreign dependence. By 1987 we'd completely forgotten about that goal. (US citizens have the attention span of a snail-darter.)

Re: the "decrease" in consumption... it is entirely due to recession. Consumption/GDP is still increasing as it always has.

If you don't like today's gas prices, get a car that gets decent fuel economy. Mine does about 52 mpg on the highway. (And no, it's not a Prius.)

What we really need is for oil prices to gradually and continuously increase at a reasonably slow rate from here, in a way in which people *know* that they are going to continuously increase. Nothing else will suffice to prod the US into taking real action (as opposed to just talking about it).

BTW, I very much consider this to be a World issue rather than a US one. The US represents less than 5% of world population. For every US citizen, there are around 20 human beings who happen to be citizens of other countries.

-Steve
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Don't forget LOTS of printed money.

It's a balance. But don't forget that the "Gold Standard" gave us the Great Depression of the 1930s. My dad grew up in that environment. It's the sort of thing that colors the rest of your life.

A little abstraction surrounding currency is a very good thing. But as I said, it's a balance.
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
TR: you tell us who is buying all these oil contracts if it isn't the speculators?


Who is selling the oil contracts?

Usually the same people -- only some buy first and then sell, while others sell first and then buy back later.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
But don't forget that the "Gold Standard" gave us the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Now this I have to hear.


The recession of 1929-31 was probably caused by monetary factors, as the Federal Reserve was new to the job of being the lender-of-last-resort.

It turned into a depression and then into the Great Depression because of bad policies by the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations -- raising spending and taxes, adding new protective tariffs, banning the private ownership of gold, imposing harsh regulations on a number of industries, creating cartels to limit competition, threatening some industries like electric utilities with nationalization, and encouraging unionization at a time when greater labor mobility was called for. (The latter was very good for the people who had jobs, but very bad for those who didn't.)
 
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