Crude oil closed at $36 a barrel today

Down $111 from this summer's high.

Speculators???

Pshaw...

Will he pay us our money back?

:shrug:

He's hoping people forget how much money the oil industry stole from us during his term.

n/t

Nobody who actually uses the stuff has the faintest clue.
:shrug:

but that's OK - doomers get a chubby from shit like that...

They were doing you and the world a favour by slowing down the consumption of oil and making alternatives attractive. Now anybody with some pocket change can just slurp it up, and nobody gives a shit about alt.energy. That's some chubby.

:rofl:

I guarantee global oil consumption is down - not up - because of this.

the price will spike again. And give the economy another haircut. Rinse, repeat.

So you think that global oil consumption is down because the price dropped? Or did the price drop because the global economy tanked and people with serious money went and put it somewhere safer than oil contracts?

Seriously.

What's the message here? What do you think it confirms?

who think that the spring price spike was due mostly to peak oil fundamentals, as opposed to mostly speculation.

Got some of that on me, as well. During the runup, I laughed my tail off when somebody here suggested oil would go back down below $80. :dunce:

Still, I think that over a longer term, "spike" will prove to be a misnomer, in that it implies a short, anomalous event. A dramatic up and down such as we've just seen is very likely to be followed by another and another, so what we're probably looking at here is a market gone chaotic. Just like Simmons and others predicted it would as oil production plateaus and starts to decline.

Plenty of speculative frenzy in all of that, of course, but most likely the speculation is more a symptom of the chaos than a cause.

There are seasonal cycles in consumption: At the moment, coal and NG are starting to peak as people hit the heaters: Heating oil use will also be up, but since it's not usually piped on demand it's tricky to pin down. On the other hand transport fuel (like gasoline) consumption drops as people aren't heading out for vacations, day trips or nights out so much: The trend usually reverses in the spring, with consumption picking up a little around Christmas and New Year and really climbing in March.

So, if the price blows through the roof next spring/summer, we know why. If it doesn't, and consumption is still up, then we can point the finger at market shenanigans...

They swing past it in the opposite direction, then recover to that "normal" level in relatively short time.

Inside of 2 years we'll see oil in the $80-$100 range again, mark my words. The speculative bubble is the result of peak oil fundamentals playing out quite predictably. Several more will follow over the next decade.

price of gas went all the way down to $1.46 a month or so ago and at the time oil was trading for sixty something a barrel. No doubt we've taking a fucking on gas prices but I hope the price doesn't drop any more because it will only encourage more of the same shit thats gotten us in this mess to begin with.