At First Glance, It Could Be An Automatic Weapon

A drop of unleaded fuel falls from the end of a nozzle after a motorist filled his car's tank at a service station in Washington January 2, 2008.(Jason Reed/Reuters)

Bush won't release emergency oil to ease prices

NVDL: Time to invade Iran, Mr President?

Gold breaks 25-year record to pass $850/oz

GOLD rose beyond $850/oz in London yesterday, breaching a record set more than 25 years ago as investors sought to hedge against accelerating inflation and the dollar’s decline.

Gold for immediate delivery gained $25,50, or 3,1%, to $859,20/oz in London late yesterday afternoon, exceeding the previous record of $850 on January 21 1980. The metal has climbed from a 20-year low of $251,95 in August 1999.

Prices advanced 31% last year, the biggest gain since 1979, when US inflation was more than 13%. The metal is being buoyed by many of the same factors that drove the gains in January 1980. The dollar was weakening, costlier oil signalled inflation, and the US and Iran were at loggerheads.

More.

NVDL: The difference between now and 1979/1980 is that there is no more North Sea field to discover, no more Prudhoe Bay (in Alaska), no more Russian oil fields that have escaped our efforts at discoery. Even worse, we have more people, and more cars and homes (suburbia essentially) using limited energy resources. Something has got to give and while human beings are not in the habit of giving up their bad habits, they will be forced to do so, and worse.

Oil: Slipping Its Way Back To $100 A Barrel?

Oil has been down more than $2 a barrel today, but some traders say the move to $100 is back in play. That trend became clear yesterday, when crude rose $4.37 to $94.39 per barrel, a 4.9 percent increase.

Joe Terranova, MBF Clearing director of trading, said he saw a a condition in crude futures today he hasn't seen in months. Terranova explained that the front month contract in oil futures, the January month, was trading at a slightly lower price than February.

Today's price move "is a modest correction based on the front month spread slipped into contango for the first time since earlier this summer," he said. February's contract was trading about 17 cents above January's this afternoon. "A contango market is not necessarily down but it doesn't trade with upward momentum," he said.

But Terranova says though the trend toward $100 is still in place. He said one sign of that is the call from Goldman Sachs for a $95 oil price in 2008. "When the New York Yankees say something, everyone listens," he said. Goldman apparently wears the pin stripes on Wall Street. "They bear a lot of weight in the marketplace. If I see them coming, I don't get in the way," he said.

M.F. Global senior vice president John Kilduff also says the move toward $100 per barrel is on. He has been predicting oil would hit $100 before the end of the year, and he said today's sell off is not surprising and the trend higher is still in tact.
By:Patti Domm from CNBC.com

ALERT: Oil at record high above $86

Crude oil surged to fresh records in Asia on Tuesday, trading at 86.33 dollars a barrel amid mounting tension between Turkey and Kurdish rebels across the border in Iraq.

In late morning trade New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, was 20 cents higher than the 86.13 dollars reached in late New York trades on Monday.

Brent North Sea crude for November delivery was 10 cents higher at a fresh record of 82.85 dollars a barrel, after spiking 2.20 dollars to 82.75 dollars a barrel in London on Monday.

Brent’s previous record of 81.05 dollars was reached late last month, while New York crude has now surpassed its former all-time peak of 84.10 dollars reached during intra-day trade in September.

For the rest of this The Times.co.za article, click here.

NVDL: The military scuffles in Turkey are a smokescreen for the real reason oil prices are this high. Excessive demand, depleting supply. You have the all clear to panic.
For more from MSNBC (watch Greenspan's comments on the effects of oil on recesssion), click here.

Kunstler: Two Clues for the Clueless

NVDL: New York's oil price hit a record 84.10 dollars in September. London's Brent North Sea crude for November delivery has slid 28 cents to 78.89.

Right now, the world's largest consumer of oil is also the world's largest polluter (both by substantial margins). The USA pumps over 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the environment every year. China is a runner up, catching up fast, at just under 5 billion tons. Russia, India and Japan are also contenders, but are far kinder to the world at under 2 billion tons. South Africa and South Korea with equi-sized populations are out of the top 10, both at around half a billion tons in total.

Let's reflect that the Kyoto Protocol was rejected way back in 2001 because President Bush said "it would damage US interests." That's quite a clear message, if you ask me. The US's interests are fine, even if everyone else (that means, the world), suffers. Is this a prelude to a war setup, where everywhere else is expendable (in laymans terms: they don't matter) as long as YahooSA gets to go to the mall and eat MacDonalds happily ever after? It is a question we will unfortunately be around to see the answer.

Kunstler:
Dependence on foreign oil is not itself the problem. The problem is that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land.

In other words, the problem is not the fact that two-thirds of the oil we use comes from other nations, but is about our own behavior in our own nation. In a reality-based existence, it is more effective to modify one's own behavior than to try to govern the behavior of other sovereign individuals and entities. It ought to be a test of anybody applying for the position of president to realize this, and to communicate it to the public. One might expect a Republican candidate to artfully avoid this reality -- since car-dealers and suburban sprawl developers are among the heartiest Republicans. But it's disgraceful for the Democratic opposition to ignore this reality.

The gravest problem this nation faces, therefore, is the inability of the American public and its leaders to confront the fact that we can't continue to live the way we do -- and, by the way, when I say "leaders," I don't restrict myself to political leaders. Our failures of leadership are comprehensive, including leadership in my nominal sector, journalism. For two weeks in a row, the price of oil on the futures markets has closed above $80-a-barrel, and for these two weeks The New York Times Sunday Business Section has failed to run one story on the consequences of oil rising into this uncharted territory of high price. Are the Times editors on crack? Surely $80-plus oil will thunder through the American economy.

The second clue for the clueless came over the weekend when President Bush declared that the chaos reigning in America's airports (information of Betsy Gotbaum) had reached such an intolerable level that the federal government might have to step in and whip the airlines into shape by regulating routes and apportioning flights. Again, the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem is really striking. It's as if the entire nation had suffered a lobotomy -- and perhaps we have, through the agency of excessive TV-watching.

Rail Transport
Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart -- say from Cleveland to Columbus Ohio -- we could decongest the airports overnight? That, by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often? It certainly hasn't occurred to anybody running for president, or any of the editors-in-chief in the news media, or even any executive in what remains of the the railroad industry. But I'll try to boil it down to a digestible sound byte for them: the best way to relieve the current agony of air travel is to get the passenger trains running again.

Let the airlines do what they do best: really long-range trips. Let trains do the rest. We will consume less foreign oil. The jobs now hemorrhaging out of the US auto industry could move into the passenger rail and rolling stock sectors. Everybody will be much happier.

The people I know complain endlessly about how stupid President George W. Bush is, and how badly he has lied to the public about this or that. But a casual observer from Mars would have to conclude that President Bush perfectly represents a nation that shows such a thoroughgoing incapacity for thought, and such an aversion to the truth about its own behavior. A people so hopelessly unwilling to get its act together deserves to suffer.
From Kunstler.com

Oil now $81-a-barrel

Earlier this morning I was contemplating this question: through which medium (or channel) does news travel the fastest. I've been inclined to think it's radio. After all, the speed of sound can be trasmitted and re-transmitted with a minimum of infrastructure and bandwidth (and total energy costs). Sure the speed of light is quick, but it also takes time to set up images + voiceovers, and in terms of the internet, it takes a while to set up a search and then to read. Thus radio comes up trumps. Makes sense then to add top news stories in an audio stream on especially NEWSY sites, doesn't it?

It's probably a close race though, but it's staggering that this news, which is of vital importance to the planet, is 2 hours old. Earlier this morning we all stood around the big screen TV in breathless anticipation of a McCann revelation. Now that's news!

Meanwhile from the Belfast Telegraph (of all places - not CNN):

Oil prices have hit a new high in New York overnight due to concerns that rising demand during the winter could squeeze supplies. The price has hit $81-a-barrel and experts are predicting that it could rise even further to $85 or $90 before the end of the year. The surge comes despite OPEC's promise to pump an extra 500,000 barrels per day from November.

NVDL: Notice the converging catastrophes...expensive food, expensive fuel, credit crunch (that no one is taking seriously), shit kicking weather, fires floods and all the rest. We need to take a breather and get back to Nature, and what we're really supposed to be doing with our time and our lives.

Greenspan: Oops on Iraq

In his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”

The OPEC Con

The reality is that output cannot be raised. World global supplies have been at maximum for some time, and we've seen a gradual downward slide in supply and capacity. Can you imagine the worldwide fallout (and catastrophe) were it to leak out that this was the case? That worldwide demand is now greater than supply (and this trend will worsen over time)?

The result will be runaway prices, or recession, or both.
Opec's saying they will raise output by November is a bit like a weatherman promising cooler temperatures in winter. It's likely to happen anyway (since the global demand curve for fuel is at its lowest in November).

From BBC.com:
Opec agrees to raise oil output

Opec controls more than a third of global oil suppliesOpec members have agreed to increase oil production by 500,000 barrels a day to meet concerns about rising demand.
The 12-nation oil producers' cartel agreed to support a proposal from influential member Saudi Arabia to raise daily production from 1 November.

Oil prices have been touching record highs on fears of a growing imbalance between supply and demand. But despite Opec's decision US light crude settled at a record closing price of $78.23, up 74 cents.