OPEC says oil consumption will take 5 years to recover? So which idiot pushed oil prices to $73 last week?

SALON: You have a situation where there is no real demand growth for oil coming for the next five years, according to OPEC. Yet the price of oil has doubled since the lows earlier this year.

It is a situation where the fundamentals do not matter, and money is chasing the hot trade. Unfortunately, this has real life implications.

SHOOT: Oil needs to be more expensive based on its real value, and the contributions energy make to pollution/climate change. It is also an endowment not only for our generation but for those to come. In this sense, it ought to be 2, 3 ten times more expensive.

clipped from open.salon.com That is the prediction of OPEC, which controls much of the world's oil supply. OPEC said that peak oil consumption reached 31 million barrels per day in 2008, before the financial crisis. It predicted that it may take until 2013 before oil reaches that level of consumption again. OPEC further predicted that investment in oil will fall as a result. It said it has shaved its planned investment from $165 billion to $110 billion and that it has put on hold 35 projects with a capacity of five million barrels per day. On the news, not surprisingly, oil futures fell. A rogue trader managed to drive prices up to $73 a barrel a week ago, but oil is now trading at around $62 a barrel. This is another example of why commodities trading needs some regulation. You have a situation where there is no real demand growth for oil coming for the next five years, according to OPEC. Yet the price of oil has doubled since the lows earlier this year.