Why $120 oil is good

[icarus]

Originally Posted by Rybold

FL_Prius_Driver, I agree with you.

icarus, as with everything, there needs to be a balance. If gasoline prices (and diesel) went to $12/gallon TOMORROW, the commercial trucking industry would come to a standstill. Farming would come to a standstill. Shipping would come to a standstill. The stockmarket would plunge, taking the dollar down with it. There needs to be balance, and in my own opinion, $4.00/gallon is today's balance.

icarus, what are we going to do about the commercial trucking industry, and it's affects on the price of food and other goods?

With all due respect, this thread is about $120 oil NOT $12 gasoline. There is another thread for that. I am not advocating fuel at any given price, I agree that a balance is needed along with some predictabilty. What i am really saying is, if the price goes down, old behaviors come back quite quickly. We learn our lessons slowly.

Icarus

[DaveinOlyWA]

it is working... gas price goes up, consumption goes down... now we need to add a buck in taxes to fund alternative transportation, that way consumption will continue to drop...

these high prices have started a good thing, lets keep it going

[Fibb222]

Again about speculation re: price of oil.

As well, Jeff Rubin, the firm's chief strategist, is dismissing the notion that speculators, not supply and demand fundamentals, are the key drivers in crude's push into three digits.


“I relegate it to where it belongs: a footnote,” Mr. Rubin said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. Even if speculators actually took physical delivery of all the oil for which they have bought futures contracts on commodity exchanges over the past 5-1/4 years, and the stuff was diverted from the market, it would add up to only about 500,000 barrels a day, he said. That's about a fifth of the increase in Chinese oil demand in that period and less than the depletion in production at Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field.


He also cited the fact that U.S. oil inventories have so far remained within their longer-term range of 50 to 55 days of supply. “If hoarding were raising prices, inventories should be rising, but in fact, they are not,” he said.

from reportonbusiness.com: globeinvestor.com - TSX poised for new heights, Rubin forecast says

The lesson is, don't count on oil prices going down... they probably won't.

[PriusSport]

Correct, no doubt. Global Warming and decreasing carbon are helped greatly by high oil prices. Cheap oil would be a problem.