LAT: Signs Point to Prolonged Trend of High Oil Prices (OPEC, DOE)

Signs Point to Prolonged Trend of High Oil Prices
By Elizabeth Douglass, Times Staff Writer


OPEC ministers and the U.S. Energy Department delivered a chilling message to consumers Monday: High energy costs are here to stay.

At a meeting in Kuwait, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries hinted at possible production cuts next year — a move that would boost oil prices. Federal energy forecasters, meanwhile, issued revised projections showing sharply higher crude prices extending until at least 2014.

The combo helped roil energy futures trading and sparked fresh fears of another oil-fed assault on the economy, which has weathered record prices with little damage.

"The best you can hope for is that oil maintains an erratic uptrend rather than a spiky uptrend," said Stephen Leeb, president of Leeb Capital Management in New York. Leeb, author of the Oil Factor, a book predicting an era of turbulent oil prices, echoed other petroleum prognosticators Monday in outlining a future in which oil will see more ups than downs.

In New York, the U.S. benchmark oil for January delivery responded by rising nearly $1.91 a barrel Monday to close at $61.30 a barrel, short of the peak daily closing price of $69.81 a barrel reached Aug. 30. The reaction was exacerbated by a weather forecast showing colder temperatures, which would increase energy demand. An explosion Sunday at an oil terminal near London added to traders' skittishness....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-opec13dec13,0,7978009.story?coll=la-home-headlines

The Energy Dept knew this all along but no way it would be released until * was safely into a disastrous second term.