Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=" target="_blank">http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNat ion.asp?Page=</a>\Nation\archive\200511\NAT20051103a.html >>Poor but growing countries pose the greatest risk to the world's oil supply and prices, according to a University of California economics professor, who added Wednesday that the American public should blame those laws of supply and demand, not "greedy oil companies." "What we've been experiencing worldwide the last couple years is not a reduction in supply," said Prof. James Hamilton in a presentation to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. This year's run-up in oil prices is due to developing countries, not low supplies, he said. "It's been a tremendous surge in demand," he said, adding that contrary to the idea of limited supplies, there's been a "huge surge in production" as well in the last two years. Hamilton said the higher demand is coming from poor countries that are beginning to open markets and industrialize, especially China. In 2004, China accounted for 8 percent of the global consumption of oil, Hamilton said, while the United States accounted for 25 percent. But, he said, China now accounts for one-third of the global growth in petroleum consumption. Hamilton said that for the last 15 years China's demand for oil has risen an average of 7.5 percent each year. <<
Originally Posted By TomSawyer So increased demand is causing the high prices of oil? Sounds like Americans better get serious about conservation if they don't want half their paychecks going to the oil companies. But, as far as those oil stocks go... ka-ching!
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<"It's been a tremendous surge in demand," he said, adding that contrary to the idea of limited supplies, there's been a "huge surge in production" as well in the last two years.>> BS. Gas prices at the pump have dropped more than 30% since their peak about a month ago, and I'm sure demand has not dropped an equivalent amount. The oil companies take advantage of any event they can (foreign unrest, natural disasters, etc.) to charge whatever the market will bear. Then they back down their prices when Congress talks about investigating them for price gouging.
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "BS. Gas prices at the pump have dropped more than 30% since their peak about a month ago, and I'm sure demand has not dropped an equivalent amount. The oil companies take advantage of any event they can (foreign unrest, natural disasters, etc.) to charge whatever the market will bear. Then they back down their prices when Congress talks about investigating them for price gouging." I'd have to agree. Here in lovely Long Beach, California, not even a month ago I was paying $2.99 a gallon. If Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Fred and Ethel were so devasting to the oil industry, because it would figure that right about now any production problems would be manifesting themselves, why am I now paying $2.69 a gallon?
Originally Posted By Beaumandy <<<a href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/column/alanreynolds/2005/11/03/174128.html>>" target="_blank">http://www.townhall.com/opinio n/column/alanreynolds/2005/11/03/174128.html>></a> I think everyone will find this interesting even though it rips my man Bill O'Reilly. When the unsurprising news came out that big oil companies had big profits, Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV concluded: "My contention is the oil companies don't have to double their profits. They can maybe make them two-fifths (40 percent). Take a little less for the good of the nation." Exxon-Mobil's recent profit margin was up to nearly 9 percent of sales. Suppose they tried to cut that to a nickel out of every dollar by offering to sell crude oil for $3 a barrel less than the going price on the Chicago mercantile exchange. Refiners around the world would instantly commit to buying every drop. By the next day, the world price of crude would be same as before. Suppose the Big Five oil companies got together and agreed to cut retail gasoline prices at their company-owned stations by 20 cents a gallon. Motorists would soon drain those stations dry, leaving the much larger number of independent gas stations in a position to charge even more. Meanwhile, independent station owners would file a complaint with the antitrust division of the Department of Justice accusing the majors of collusive predatory pricing to drive them out of business. If prices or crude oil and gasoline really rise and fall at the whim of U.S. petroleum companies, why would oil and gas prices ever fall? Texas crude fell to $12 in February 1999. Was that because U.S. oil companies suddenly became less greedy? "Average U.S. gasoline price tumbles to $2.48 a gallon," was a recent headline at USA Today, noting gas prices had dropped by at least 55 cents. The price of crude oil dropped 9.8 percent in October. The Dow Jones stock index for oil and gas companies fell 9.2 percent. On the futures market, natural gas prices fell 18 percent in a single week. O'Reilly's spin zone had to spin a new theory. He now argues that while prices rose because of some inexplicable hurricane of greed, they subsequently fell because "the oil companies have been scared into lowering prices of oil." He claims to know "the worldwide demand for oil is the same today as it was eight weeks ago. But oil prices are declining -- so what gives? Fear. That's what gives. Millions of Americans are angry with big oil and are buying less fuel." Excuse me? If millions of Americans are "buying less fuel," how could demand be the same? Trying to spin his way out of that paradox, O'Reilly differentiated "worldwide" demand. But worldwide demand must be entirely irrelevant unless domestic prices of oil and gasoline are set by supply and demand in worldwide markets, rather than by corporate caprice. Yet O'Reilly says, "The truth is that the American oil companies set the domestic price of fuel based upon what they think they can get away with." But if domestic oil and fuel prices were set by domestic oil companies, why even mention world demand? And if only American oil companies are fixing prices -- up or down depending on their mood -- then why are those prices identical, both here and abroad, at British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell? In reality, O'Reilly could not possibly know whether or not "worldwide demand for oil is the same today as it was eight weeks ago." The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates world demand by the month, and its latest was for September. "Chinese apparent demand is again revised down," said the IEA. "Spot gasoline prices were pressured (downward) on record U.S. imports." If only they could accept O'Reilly's notion that American oil companies set prices wherever they like, then the IEA could just stop collecting such bothersome facts. If you sell your house for much more than you paid for it, you will receive a "windfall profit." When you take that windfall from selling your old home and go out shopping for a new one, however, you'll discover prices of replacement homes have gone up, too. That may explain why the Senate has not yet contemplated imposing an extra "windfall profits tax" on windfalls homeowners receive when selling their homes. Since 1997, in fact, couples can pocket half a million dollars of such windfalls tax-free. Aside from the tax break on homes, something very similar happens in any business whenever the price goes up for something bought earlier at a lower price. Businesses that process raw materials hold inventories of those materials, for example, and those inventories may have been purchased for much less than the current price. When the book value of those inventories is adjusted to reflect today's higher price, accountants add that difference to the firm's profits. But this is called "inventory profit," because those paper gains will soon be needed to replace the raw materials at the new, higher price. Then they vanish. The oil industry holds a lot of inventory, and we should be glad it does. If an oil company stockpiled a lot of oil at $40 -- before it rose to $60 -- that is going to look almost as good (on the books) as the sorts of windfalls we've seen on home sales in Las Vegas. Since gasoline prices also rise whenever crude does (partly because crude accounts for half the cost), products refined from the cheaper $40 crude will also be unusually profitable for a while. But this is like making money on the house you sold but needing every dollar to buy a replacement home. Prices of oil likewise have to reflect replacement costs, and the resulting one-time surges in inventory profits are not a problem, but part of the solution. On second thought, perhaps I should not have brought up this analogy between "windfalls" on oil and homes. Certain senators are looking for any excuse to tax anything. I surely do not intend to encourage such political pillaging.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Millions of Americans are angry with big oil and are buying less fuel.<< I think Bill O'Reilly was correct in holding their feet to the fire on this. I don't know if it's anger or if it could be that Americans are buying less fuel because it was at $3 a gallon just a few weeks ago. I know in our household, we cut way, way back on driving wherever possible, and I have no doubt every industry with a fleet of trucks started really fixating on efficiency. How else to explain a 30¢ per gallon drop in prices other than lower demand?
Originally Posted By jasmine7 There is no good reason to explain the price increases and drops. Just a few weeks ago the gas prices were $3.19 here in SW MO. Now they are $1.97. Nothing has changed that can explain a drop of that magnitude, other than the oil companies not wanting to get reamed by the government.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <There is no good reason to explain the price increases and drops.> Sure there is. It's called the futures market.
