Oil Rises Above $98

Crude keeps going up, Blame the dollar the weather the Middle East the Iran USA nuke situation the Turkey Kurdish affair blame anything but the real cause is SPECULATION... crude oil rose above $98 a barrel for the first time in New York as the dollar tumbled to a record low against the euro and producers evacuated platforms in the North Sea, evading a storm forecast to bring waves as high as 36 feet.

BP Plc and ConocoPhillips evacuated oilrig workers, adding to supply concerns before a U.S. Energy Department report that show inventories fell for a third week.

One-hundred-dollar oil is the big benchmark and the factors ( speculation) driving crude towards that are in force.The supply disruption in the North Sea has given further impetus'' to prices.

Crude oil for December delivery rose to $98.17 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since trading began in 1983. It was at $98.16 at 4:12 p.m. in Singapore.

Yesterday, oil rose $2.72, or 2.9 percent, to settle at $96.70 a barrel, a record close, Prices have passed the previous all-time inflation- adjusted record reached in 1981

The weakness in the dollar is giving investors the chance to buy oil at a cheaper price....Gold reached a 27-year high and silver rose to the most in 26 years as rising oil prices and a slumping dollar deepened concern that inflation will accelerate.

High oil prices are a concern for Europe as they drive up production prices and in some states this will be dramatic. This will also have a effect in the car industry as carmakers will increase sales of compact models or Smaller Cars .

For carmakers to grow out of the dependence on fossil fuels they need to achieve improved fuel efficiency, this and other energy sources should be the priority of any Goverment..not creating regional conflicts...

Dollar Slumps to Record

The never ending saga of the dollar like the crude price has its causes and effects in anything and everything the real cause for both cases is SPECULATION pure and simple... the dollar continues on a downward trend and has now slumped to a record low against the euro after Chinese officials signaled plans to diversify the nation's $1.43 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves in response to a falling U.S. currency.
The Chinese will favor stronger currencies over weaker ones, and will readjust accordingly...The dollar fell against all 16 of the most-active currencies, and if this goes on as further pressure is applied on the dollar them most likely THE DOLLAR WILL LOOSE ITS STATUS AS THE WORLD CURRENCY...

The U.S. currency slumped to $1.4666 per euro, the lowest since the 13-nation currency debuted in January 1999...The dollar fell to an all-time low against the synthetic euro, a theoretical value that estimates where the currency would have traded before its inception. The prior record was $1.4557 set in 1992.
According to our WorldWatch analyst the U.S. currency may fall to $1.50 against the euro...

Oil Rises to a Record

Our WorldWatch office received a news flash informing that crude oil rose to a record today as a storm approaches North Sea Platforms with 36-foot waves BP Plc and ConocoPhillips evacuate workers and cut production. This will probably cause crude-oil inventories to fall around 1.6 million barrels.

Normally a disruption in the North Sea might not have so much impact, but with jitters about Iran, Turkey and another forecast decline in crude inventories, you can see why the market's is so irregular.

Crude oil for December delivery rose to $95.89 barrel at 9:50 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures climbed to $96.44 today, the highest intraday price since trading began in 1983. Prices according to last year are up 60 percent.

Brent crude oil for December rose to $92.44 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Brent reached $92.74 a barrel, the highest since trading began in 1988.
As we informed before chances are that we'll reach $100 per barril but lets hope we won't stay there long. Prices should also come down because the Saudis are cutting prices to key customers.

PetroChina

So.Buracos WorldWatch analyst has verified that PetroChina Co. trading in Shanghai, have become the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, larger than the entire Russian stock market.

PetroChina state-owned oil producer has now a greater market value than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.

This makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation five of the world's 10 biggest companies. The oil producer's Shanghai listing pushes China's stock market beyond the U.K. as the world's third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon's ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine.

In the New York Stock Exchange Exxon is worth $488 billion..

China's largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.

The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.

Perhaps Europe and the rest of the world should have a look at this situation, learn and investigate...its time the West "copied " Chinese ideas....

Time is Running Out

The world and all who live in this ever changing planet need to adapt to the changes that daily are forced upon humans...
The most critical is in fact the continues attack to the environment...causing serious climate change that in turn forces all living
organisms to adapt or disappear.
Fossil fuels are one of the most poluting that exists but at the same time are the most used, such as crude...
So all year long we face a never ending story...Crude prices keep going us.
So the time to act is now, the car manufactures and oil companies should find a alternative energy for crude...very fast....time is running out...

Oil Resuming Trend Toward $100 a Barrel

The saga continues while the world watches and waits as crude oil rose in New York, reversing yesterday's decline from a record and resuming a trend toward $100 a barrel.

Oil producers, including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, are powerless to stop prices from reaching $100 as few countries can produce more crude, Oman's energy minister said yesterday. Prices soared 17 percent the past month as U.S. stockpiles fell, the dollar weakened and Iran threatened to curb supplies in a standoff over nuclear research.

Brent crude oil for December settlement yesterday declined 91 cents, or 1 percent, to $89.72 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Brent reached $91.71 a barrel earlier in the day, the highest since trading began in 1988.

According to our WorldWatch group all oil-producing countries are at maximum output. Maybe Saudi could produce more, but the lack of spare capacity is a major factor …

POLITICAL TENSIONS

Almost every day the dollar hits another record low against a basket of currencies no matter what the currency is.

The other critical factor is the Turkey Kurdish affair...with the world in the middle like a ping pong ball..This conflict has sparked worries of supply disruptions from northern Iraq and heightened fears of wider regional fallout if Turkey follows through with threats to launch attacks inside northern Iraq if necessary.Also The abduction of foreign oil workers in Nigeria on Friday that forced ENI unit Saipem and SBM Offshore to cut production by 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) also reignited fears of tighter winter supplies. Attacks by militant group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) had already cut Nigerian output by a fifth since early last year and forced thousands of foreigners to flee the vast wetlands region in southern Nigeria.

Despite the surge in oil prices, OPEC has shrugged off calls from importer nations to raise output, saying politics and speculation -- not a supply shortfall -- are to blame for the current situation...

The Dance

With the actual rock and roll situation of the international crude situation, were almost every day we see new
record prices, its not suprising that the local market and oil companies have started to silently increase the final consumer
price... a upward trend has been going on for well over two weeks.
The key statistic in the crude oil market is world surplus production capacity and that has improved from 1.0 million barrels per day in 2005 to an estimate of 2.0 million barrels per day in September of 2007, but that is still relatively tight and the politics of the Middle East and Turkey remain tense - especially with Iran. Roughly 20% of the world's oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran has the ability to block the channel. And world oil demand continues to grow.

On September 11, 2007, OPEC met and decided to increase its current production levels by 500,000 barrels per day, beginning November 1st. On October 9, 2007, the DOE estimated OPEC's actual production at 30.8 million barrels per day in September with 2.2 million barrels coming daily from Iraq. That was up from 30.2 million barrels per day in August. The DOE also estimated that world oil consumption will total 85.8 million barrels per day in 2007 and exceed production by 1.1 million barrels per day.