Oil Prices Surge Toward $57/barrel

[Maddy McCall]

Oil prices climbed by almost $1 a barrel on Thursday as concerns about strong demand for gasoline dominated the market's psychology.

Traders dismissed OPEC's decision on Wednesday to increase its output quota by 500,000 barrels a day, saying the higher production target was already being exceeded at a time when producing nations are eager to profit from high prices.

Light sweet crude for deliver in July rose 93 cents to $56.50 a barrel in afternoon trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange in London, August Brent gained 33 cents to $55.57 a barrel.

Oil analyst Carl Larry at Barclays Capital in New York said oil prices were destined to rise to $60 a barrel because demand continues to rise and the world's producers and refiners are struggling to keep up. snip/ What stood out in the report to many traders, Larry said, was that gasoline demand over the past four weeks has averaged almost 9.5 million barrels per day, or roughly 3 percent above year ago levels in spite of retail gasoline prices averaging $2.13 per gallon nationwide.

More: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8AOSNN00.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Here we go! Next stop $75.00, then, due to "strong heating oil demand"

we will see $100.00 this winter. Powering the wal-mart factories that cover the old rice fields in china require lots of oil.

[newswolf56]

2. It was on Lou Dobbs last night that...

...far too many American working families are being shoved ever closer to bankruptcy by skyrocketing oil prices (which of course is money in the pocket for BushCo and his allies). According to Dobbs' staff, transportation to and from work (i.e., gasoline) is now consuming 11-point-something percent of the average American worker's family budget.

Once again, note the DemoPublican politicians hostility to effective public transport -- as a direct result of which we have the most (ruinously) expensive, least efficient, most environment-befouling transportation system on the planet.

And can anyone doubt the DemoPublican enactment of the bankruptcy ban is a direct response to the forthcoming, deficit-and-fuel-price-triggered economic collapse? The bankruptcy ban is truly the Dredd Scott decision of the 21st Century -- condemning all debtors to permanent indentured servitude: reducing all of us to serfdom for as long as we live.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Bankruptcy? Wrong!

There is no bankruptcy anymore for the non-rich.

The new plan is called "penury". It means "slavery by contract".

--p!

[newswolf56]

8. I think Dobbs' staff was referring to bankruptcy...

...in the literal sense, not the (now-illegal) legal sense.

(How's that for doublethink? Orwell would be proud -- or appalled.)

[Straight Shooter]

3. Shop at Wal-Mart, support China and its competitive oil consumption

It's dog eat dog out there, and China is demanding to be fed.

[bluestateguy]

5. And of course...

the conservatives always take pains to remind us that oil prices (when adjusted for inflation) are lower than they were during those God-awful Carter years.

Keep it up. It won't be long before that talking point is no longer operable.

[lastliberalintexas]

7. I hope you tell them wages were higher back then

when adjusted for inflation too.

I've not seen a study on it, but given the relativer purchasing power of the dollar and the stagnation of wages over the last 25 years, I'd be very surprised if gaswasn't more expensive today in real economic terms.

[hatrack]

6. And what better time than now to cut passenger rail funding?

Real visionaries, the Hacks of Capitol Hill. :puke: