Energy Dept. says oil, gas prices to stay high

NF Reporter · 06-11-2008, 11:24 AM

AP - The Energy Department says motorists can expect gasoline prices to remain close to $4 a gallon through next year.

Full Story...

waltky · 06-12-2008, 05:40 AM

Public blamin' speculators...

'Unethical behavior' to blame for gas prices - poll
June 11, 2008: 62% of survey respondents say record runup in prices is fault of actions by players in the gasoline supply chain.

Quote:

The question nags at Americans every time they fill up their gas tanks: Why is it costing $4 a gallon? A poll released Wednesday finds that 62% of Americans blame "unethical behavior" by industry players, while 32% attribute the price increases to supply and demand.

The CNN/Opinion Research Poll highlights a growing debate among American consumers, policymakers and oil executives over the exact causes of skyrocketing gas prices. Retail gas rose to another record Wednesday, with half the states in the nation paying more than $4 a gallon on average, according to AAA. Gas prices have risen nearly 9% from $3.718 last month and are 32% higher than the $3.066 average price a year ago. The poll reflects telephone interviews with 1,035 adults conducted June 4-5. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points

While gas prices have taken a toll on consumer budgets, oil companies have seen record profits. Last month, industry executives faced lawmakers on Capitol Hill to explain those profits, which critics claim are excessive. The executives testified that the price runups belie tight margins and reflect fundamental economic factors such as a weak dollar, increased demand abroad for oil and speculative investment. The weaker dollar encourages buying by investors who view oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation. It also increases the appeal of dollar-denominated commodities like oil to overseas investors.

MORE

waltky · 06-13-2008, 03:31 AM

Inflation bad, maybe gettin' worse...

Get used to high prices
June 12, 2008: The Fed has a mandate to keep inflation in check. But global forces and worries about the U.S. economy will keep prices high for the foreseeable future.

Quote:

For those struggling to deal with record gasoline and soaring food prices, there's bad news and more bad news. Economists think inflation is here to stay. And it's likely to get worse. A weak dollar and growing economies in emerging markets have conspired to send commodity prices higher. Those factors are unlikely to change anytime soon.

"We're more open to influences from the rest of the world than we were before," said Jay Bryson, international economist with Wachovia. "That does make it more challenging to keep inflation under control." What's more, the Federal Reserve is relatively powerless to deal with many of these pressures. "The Fed can't control prices of commodities determined in a global market," said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. "If it could, it would have done so already."

On Friday, the Labor Department will report its latest reading on inflation. According to estimates from Briefing.com, economists expect that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.5% in May. That would be the biggest jump in a year. It also would likely mean that prices would be up more than 4% on a year-over-year basis. The so-called core CPI, which excludes food and energy, is also expected to pick up speed. Forecasts are for a 0.2% jump, following a 0.1% gain in April.

MORE

waltky · 06-18-2008, 02:26 AM

Goin' after the speculators drivin' up the price of oil...

US cracks down on oil speculators
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 - US regulators slap limits on oil contracts traded overseas amid fears speculators are artificially boosting oil prices.

Quote:

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the London-based electronic exchange would have to comply with US rules. The move comes as oil prices notch up record highs, amid fears that speculators are distorting the market.

As a result, fuel costs have shot up hitting the global economy. Airlines have been hit badly, with near record losses expected for 2008 in the US. US airlines were forecast to report $10bn (£5bn) of losses this financial year as sky-high fuel costs erode profits, according to the industry group Air Transport Association (ATA).

Oil prices slipped from their record highs near $140 a barrel reached during Monday trade as investors were cautious ahead of plans by Saudi Arabia to increase production in July. US sweet, light crude finished down 60 cents at $134.01, while London Brent settled 99 cents lower at $133.72.

Speculators to blame?

See also:

Airlines reeling from fuel hikes
June 18, 2008 - MAJOR US airlines say they could lose $US10 billion ($10.65bn) this year due to skyrocketing fuel costs, a staggering sum that would almost match the industry's worst-ever year loss in 2002.

Quote:

James May of the Air Transport Association also told a joint US Senate hearing on speculative trading in the oil markets that up to 200 communities could lose airline service as a result of carrier capacity cuts that are being imposed to save money. "This nation's economy is inextricably linked to the viability of its air transportation system. If the airlines continue to spiral downward, so will the economy," Mr May said.

Wall Street analysts are also predicting multibillion-dollar losses for big airlines that are spending 50 per cent more on fuel this year. United's disclosure was made as part of Mr May's push in Congress for tougher regulation of oil futures trading.

Airlines believe market manipulation and speculation are behind the record run-up in global crude prices although the Bush administration believes recent price spikes are due mainly to supply and demand. Virgin America, the low-cost US airline partly owned by Britain's Virgin Group, said overnight it would cut flying capacity about 10 per cent in the fourth quarter from previously estimated levels, as it deals with high oil prices.

More Airlines reeling from fuel hikes | NEWS.com.au Business

waltky · 06-22-2008, 08:59 PM

And right when they were predictin' the demise of the gas guzzlin' SUV's...

Saudi Arabia Will Pump More Oil In Future To Curb Crude Prices
June 22, 2008 - Saudi King Abdullah offered to slightly increase oil production to curb soaring prices globally.

Quote:

An emergency energy summit meeting convened on Sunday aimed at defusing market tensions led by higher crude prices as demand of oil in Asian region has increased. Saudi Arabia is considered as a top player in Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The current efforts is a follow up request by the U.s. President George W. Bush, who had asked the oil producing nations including Saudis to pump more oil in his visit to Riyadh in January. During President Bush's last meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, the leader had dismissed the possibility of raising oil producing to help reducing the record setting fuel prices.

But it seems that Saudi Arabia, which dominates the oil producers' group, has realized that the global financial market has been badly affected over rising demand from Asia even though higher fuel prices have prompted U.S. consumers to cut down on gasoline usage. Being the world's largest oil-producing country, Saudi Arabia's oil minister had indicated that it will increase production rate by about 500,000 barrels per day. Saudi Arabia raised its oil production by 300,000 barrels a day in the month of May, while the delegates from the oil ministry confirmed that they would add another 200,000 barrels a day in July. The hike in crude production will raise its current levels to 9.7 million barrels per day in the next month.

The U.S. markets along with global economies have suffered due to the higher oil prices that had reached a record high to $140 a barrel. Over the past 12 months, oil rates have gone up by 80 percent, pushing gasoline prices along with goods and food rates as the U.S. economy deals with rising risks of steep inflation. The rally in energy prices continued during the week, raising warnings for the eleven leading oil consumers as the global economies weaken due to subprime mortgage turmoil in the U.S. markets. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, addressing the 36-nation summit hosted in its Red Sea city of Jeddah on Sunday, blamed the speculators and analysts for the hiked up prices of oil.

Saudi Arabia Will Pump More Oil In Future To Curb Crude Prices | AHN | June 22, 2008

See also:

Little hope oil summit will cut prices: Shell
Sun Jun 22, 2008 - Crisis talks over record high oil prices are unlikely to quickly turn the tables on roaring markets, the chief of Royal Dutch Shell said on Sunday.

Quote:

"What I've heard so far are basically all good ideas, but it will probably not change the price tomorrow morning," Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer told Reuters. "The mood of the meeting is all about investment, that is the way to go. For investment we need fiscal stability and security." Energy policy makers from the world's top producers and consumers, plus chief executives from big oil firms, meet in Jeddah on Sunday to seek solutions to oil's unrelenting rise, which has seen prices double over the past year.

Saudi Arabia has said in recent days it will boost production again in July to 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd), it highest rate in decades. But delegates said the final communique from the emergency meeting of world oil powers was unlikely to deliver any hard measures, focusing instead on the need for greater transparency in oil markets, increased investment and low-carbon renewable energy sources.

The meeting also highlighted the stark divide between those who believe high oil prices are purely the result of soaring demand from consuming nations and slower growth in production from those who see speculators as the primary force behind the rally, a camp that includes most OPEC members. On the causes of high prices van der Veer said: "There's nobody to blame. It's extremely complex, everybody has his own reading, but there is no one party you can point out."

Little hope oil summit will cut prices: Shell | Special Coverage | Reuters

Icorigin · 06-22-2008, 11:27 PM

There was a time in the history of the United States (i.e the very-early 1900s and before) when civil-government marriage licenses did not exist. Both marriages and weddings did, of course, exist.

It was a time when American children in general were taught from the Sacred-66-books Holy Bible in public schools, and thus were far more aware of the Scriptural directives for pre-marital chastity, the need to get married, the requirement to not dress immodestly in public view and to not commit self-sodomizing masturbation, fornication, nor adultery. It was a time when those who were married had large families, nevertheless.

It was a far more sexually-satisfying and progenitively-productive period in our nation's history, to say the least.

In relatively recent years, city and county and state and federal government has - by demand and manipulation of the ones governed - replaced Biblical codes of sexual and marital law with non-Biblical replacements, which has been and continues to be problematic overall.

For example, whatever sexually-related or family-related involvement one has with the government and the Federal Reserve monetary system of the government involving social-security numbers is defined and regulated by excessive, legalistically-nitpicky, and changeable legislative and judicial rulings of an increasingly secular third party we call secular government which - though such has been and yet it influenced by and reflects many of the commandments of the Bible in many things - is ultimately bound only by their own self-established and self-enforced peculiarities. Such artificial laws are sometimes in direct conflict against the doctrinal practices of Christians, such as when governmental Equal Rights and Equal Opportunity laws are in direct opposition to the Lord's directives of Biblical patriarchal authority within and outside the family.

For example, even though IRS Form 1040 defines 'marriage' as: "a union of a man and a woman," the precise wording does not in fact convey what type of a union that is; namely, the additional qualifying words of "sexual" and "permanent" are not there. The way it now reads, the "union" is merely a financial, business, or corporate union. And even though the word 'children' occurs in 1040 instructions, such are not necessarily one's own children but instead are merely "dependents" "residing within the household." The New-Testament book of Hebrews is more definitive as to what internal household or apartment locations are for sexual marital union:

Heb 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be nondefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterous.

Thus, modern communities are beset with little if any adherence to anti-immodesty, anti-fornication, anti-sodomy, and anti-adultery mandates while being burdened with anti-marriage pro-cohabitation and even homogay-"marriage" phenomena.

The subject of cohabitation is, by necessity, related to harem-type multiple-wife polygamy, because it involves the question of whether or not a contemporary man certifies his woman or women "legally" with marriage license or certificates from the State. Even though most secular governments currently do not enforce anti-fornication, anti-sodomy, and anti-adultery secular laws, they do have laws relating to sexual harassment and assault and rape, divorce, child protection and custody, kidnapping, and abuse.

Whether or not the State would aggressively prosecute multiple-marriage-licensed polygamous couples (both man and women) for "bigamy" is not known. It seems that declaring more than one legally-licensed spouse to the State would be confusing to the legal-licensing State, which does not allow the possibilities of that in their restrictively-and-rigidly-worded government forms. The only recourse common-law non-licensed married couples have in communication to the government on government forms is for each to declare themselves "single" to the government?

Government officials do recognize the existence and legitimacy of non-State-licensed and non-State-certified mutually-consentual common-law marriages.....and have little if no jurisdiction over them. However, without jurisdiction over them results in both no possibly-stabilizing regulation and control of them, and no State protection for all individuals in the common-law marriages - in certain matters.

Moreover, weddings have gotten more and more expensive, and the prospects of most present Christian church people allowing for and participating in multiple weddings of the same man simultaneously married to more than one wife or concubine at a time....are bleak, to say the least. It would be intriguing to delve into the particulars of what ceremonies - if any - many of the patriarchs of the Old Testament participated in for acquisition of their multiple wives and concubines! For example, the word "wedding" is never once found within the King James Version Old Testament, although the Revised Standard Version questionably mis-states? the following:

So 3:11 Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart.

Again, the KJV instead correctly? reads:

So 3:11 Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

Here are ALL the instances of the word "wedding" within the entire New Testament of the RSV:

Mt 9:15 And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Mt 22:8 Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.
Mt 22:10 And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Mt 22:11 "But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment;
Mt 22:12 and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless.
Mr 2:19 And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
Lu 5:34 And Jesus said to them, "Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

Some similarity and some discrepancy exist as to the RSV rendition of:

Joh 3:29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full.
2Co 11:2 I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband.

compared to the the KJV rendition of the same references:

Joh 3:29 He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.
2Co 11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

Interestingly, the KJV wording of "spouse" in their translation of Song of Solomon 4:8, 4:9, 4:10, 4:11, 4:12 and 5:1....reads instead: "bride" in the RSV wording.

Even in cases of multiple-woman polygamy in Scripture, each polygamous patriarch had a primary wife among the less-important others. Abraham had Sarah, Jacob had Rachel, David had Bathsheba, and so forth. The Torah itself displays preference for the primary woman, by stating:

De 21:15 "If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other disliked, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the disliked, and if the first-born son is hers that is disliked....(and so on)

Incidently, TWO wives was somewhat conventional in cases of Biblical polygamy, as indicated below:

Ge 4:19 And Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.
1Sa 1:2 [Elkanah] had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
2Sa 2:2 So David went up there, and his two wives also, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel.
1Ch 4:5 Ashhur, the father of Tekoa, had two wives, Helah and Naarah;
2Ch 24:3 Jehoiada got for him two wives, and he had sons and daughters.

Civilized society recognizes the temptation and the danger of non-licensed cohabitation in which marital union is not declared to the State. Even the Bible records instance of misunderstanding in the following:

Genesis 12:11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, "I know that you are a woman beautiful to behold;
12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife'; then they will kill me, but they will let you live.
13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account."
14 When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, he-asses, menservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels.
17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
18 So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
19 Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone."

[More to follow]

waltky · 11-27-2008, 12:57 AM

So they get us to cut back on our consumption, then they want to cut production to raise prices???

OPEC could slash output - again
November 27, 2008 : OPEC could cut oil output for the second time in as many months as weak demand and recession jitters drive prices down.

Quote:

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has watched oil prices collapse since striking record highs above $US147 per barrel in July, sparking serious concern among its members about plunging revenues. However, ahead of the Cairo meeting, OPEC President Chakib Khelil this week downplayed the idea of an output decision in Cairo. Mr Khelil, who is also the energy minister of OPEC member Algeria, indicated that the Cairo meeting was too early because ministers needed more time to study the market. At the same time, Libya's oil minister Shukri Ghanem told AFP that "all options are open'' in Cairo -- and added that "there could be a decision'' to cut output in the Egyptian capital.

OPEC ministers agreed in Vienna last month to reduce production by 1.5 million barrels a day from November 1 as they sought to defend tumbling prices. But the market has since crumbled, approaching the lowest levels for nearly four years on growing concern that a painful global recession could ravage demand for energy, traders said. OPEC, whose next scheduled output meeting is in Oran, Algeria on December 17, has meanwhile signalled that it is ready to intervene on a regular basis to help prop up the market.

"OPEC output cuts are just starting to eat into crude oil supplies, and the ministers may decide to cut additional barrels when they gather in Cairo on Saturday,'' said Peter Beutel, analyst at US energy consultancy Cameron Hanover. However, Raad Al Kadiri, an analyst with PFC Energy Oil, said the cartel was happy to wait until December to assess the situation. "They (OPEC) seem to be signalling that they want to wait and see how existing cuts start to feed their way through... and leave any major decisions until the meeting in Oran in December.'' He added: "But at this moment in time there does not seem to be any great enthusiasm to do anything major.''

More OPEC could slash output again | Business | News.com.au

See also:

Oil retreats on economic concerns
November 27, 2008: Crude futures remain in low $50s range as investors ponder weak U.S. reports.

Quote:

Oil prices fell below $54 a barrel Thursday as dismal U.S. economic data and rising crude inventories outweighed the possibility of production cuts by OPEC and Russia. By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for January delivery was down 86 cents to $53.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Markets in the United States are closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, but electronic trading on the Nymex continues. The dollar's weakening against other major currencies helped the Nymex contract recover from a low of $52.62 earlier in the session.

Investors tend to increase their holdings in commodities like oil when the dollar falls and as a hedge against inflation. Prices have hovered just above three-year lows this week as bad economic news painted a bleak picture of U.S. demand for crude.

More http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/27/mark...l.ap/index.htm

CrazyCatholicGirl · 11-29-2008, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by waltky

So they get us to cut back on our consumption, then they want to cut production to raise prices???

OPEC could slash output - again
November 27, 2008 : OPEC could cut oil output for the second time in as many months as weak demand and recession jitters drive prices down.

See also:

Oil retreats on economic concerns
November 27, 2008: Crude futures remain in low $50s range as investors ponder weak U.S. reports.

But if they increase the cost of fuel than won't the cost of food go up too? It seems selfish for them to raise gas prices to make themselves richer if it means poor people will go hungry.