The price of oil is plunging.
For the first quarter of 2017 West Texas Intermediate (WTI) held a pretty stable range between $54–58 per barrel. Now it is back to the roller coaster that we have been on since mid-2014.
As I write this, WTI is struggling to hold $43 per barrel and is sinking like a rock. Continue reading
The View From Hubbert’s Peak
In 1971, the American President put an end to a 2,500 year trend; the Wall Street Journal called it “Nixon’s Worst Weekend.” Considering the old boy had some really bad ones, this must have been something special. In August of that year (on Friday the 13th) it was decided that the U.S. would no longer pay out gold for its paper dollars. OPEC Ministers took note, and in September they met, deciding it would be necessary to collect more paper dollars, if possible, since gold was no longer on offer and oil was the only asset they had to sell.
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The Wizard of Oz
The ultimate irony for this generation of investors is that, despite the occasional obligatory chant about ‘free markets’ and the wonders of capitalism, most of the day is spent obsessing about what the world’s most important central planner will do next. By Supreme Central Planner, I mean, the Fed. Continue reading
World is producing more than it needs, thanks to boom in shale oil, bank says
One of the world’s leading investment banks says the benchmark price of North American oil is going to fall even further, to $70 US a barrel by next spring.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs slashed its forecast late Sunday night for both West Texas Intermediate (known as WTI) and Brent crude — the two most common types of oil used and sold in North America and Europe.
Goldman Sachs says WTI will go for $75 a barrel in the first three months of 2015. Brent, meanwhile, will change hands at $85 a barrel. Both forecasts are down $15 from what the bank was last expecting. And both are forecast to slip even lower in the second quarter — historically a seasonally low time for oil prices — before rebounding a little in the summer of 2015. Continue reading
Panic is in the air as gasoline prices move above $4.00 per gallon. Politicians and pundits are rounding up the usual suspects, looking for someone or something to blame for this latest outrage to middle class family budgets. In a rare display of bipartisanship, President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner are both wringing their hands over the prospect of seeing their newly extended Social Security tax cut gobbled up by rising gasoline costs.
Unfortunately, the talking heads that are trying to explain the reasons for high oil prices are missing one tiny detail. Oil prices aren’t high right now. In fact, they are unusually low. Gasoline prices would have to rise by another $0.65 to $0.75 per gallon from where they are now just to be “normal”. And, because gasoline prices are low right now, it is very likely that they are going to go up more—perhaps a lot more.
What the politicians, analysts, and pundits are missing is that prices are ratios. Gasoline prices reflect crude oil prices, so let’s use West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil to illustrate this crucial point.
Full article: Gasoline Prices Are Not Rising, the Dollar Is Falling (Forbes)
Global Geopolitics 