Oil Above $119 !!!

SPECULATION keeps driving the crude market, there are no limits as to what oil
companies ,crude exporters,traders and governments will do to inflate the final cosumer price to beyond any realistic price...now nothing makes the crude price fall, every excuss is used to force prices to $120 a barrel, no government cares what happens in Nigeria, as long as Shell and others continue with their production, there has always been conflicts in Africa, this conflict is not new...why affect prices now... the Scottish refinery in Grangemouth plan a strike,,,in Scotland.. so what!!! why should this affect crude prices !!! SPECULATION will also say tomorrow that gasoline inventories in the US dropped 2.5 million barrels last week from 215.8 million barrels the week before...
If this situation continues by end of June the world oil demand will drop by 27%, by then a recession will affect most industrialized econimies as is the case with the US. India ,China and the middle East alone cannot conpensate for much longer the fall in demand by the West ... then the bubble will burst ... as crude oil rose to a record above $118 a barrel on concern that a labor dispute in the U.K. and disruptions in Nigeria may crimp oil supply.

Oil rose to $118.05 a barrel in New York as unions planned to strike at a Scottish refinery in Grangemouth that receives shipments of a benchmark crude oil from the North Sea. Royal Dutch Shell Plc said yesterday 169,000 barrels of daily production were suspended because of attacks last week in Africa's largest producer. Crude oil for May delivery rose to $118.05 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $117.79 at 12:09 p.m. London time. The May contract expires today. The more active June contract was at $117.05 a barrel, up 42 cents, at 12:17 a.m. London time. Brent crude for June settlement rose to a record $115.03 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange.
The contract traded at $114.86 at 12:17 a.m. local time. This latest increase will reflect on the final consumer as prices at the pump go up...the most obvious example is in Portugal were they have one of the worlds most expensive oil prices at over €1.41 per litre (95 Octane).

The prices are reviewed on a weekly basis led by the Galp and then followed in the same manner by BP,Repsol,Shell with the approval of the government ...normally Galp is the first to apply the new prices followed by the others with the same prices, their monopoly is to keep prices as high as possible, however this is forbiden by the ECC.