August 29, 2006
UNBUBBLIN' CRUDE:
Oil Prices Fall Below $70 a Barrel (Brad Foss, 8/29/06, AP)
Oil prices fell sharply for the second straight day on Tuesday, dipping below $70 a barrel as Tropical Storm Ernesto veered away from the oil and gas region of the Gulf of Mexico."A lot of people were banking on an active tropical (storm) season and so far it has been nonexistent in relation to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico," said James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading in Tampa, Fla.
Just in time for the midterm.
MORE:
Falling gas prices reflect break from adversity (PATRICK BRETHOUR, 8/30/06, Globe and Mail)
Pump prices have dropped below $1 a litre for the first time in five months -- and the cost of a fill-up is likely to drop even more in coming weeks.Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2006 11:49 PM
Even as we sit here, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean are leading a team of Democratic National Committee Special Ops ninjas on a night mission to Karl Rove's basement, in hopes of destroying the weather machine that has cooled the Atlantic waters and increased the hurricane-destroying upper atmosphere wind flows across the region...
Posted by: John at August 30, 2006 12:37 AMWe on the east coast of Florida should get some oil rigs out there pronto so Mr. Rove can reroute future hurricanes out to sea where they can no longer disturb our serenity. On the bright, there has been far less local media hype this time.
Posted by: erp at August 30, 2006 7:45 AMThe correlation with Bush's approval numbers is with gas prices, not oil pries. Gas prices need to come down as well (which they have been) to help Bush and the GOP.
Saw an analyst recently who said without the Iraq violence and the standoff with Iran oil would probably be in the $40-$50/barrell range
Posted by: AWW at August 30, 2006 8:08 AMAnd $40-$50 is still too high for a barrel of oil, once you consider that Valero has retrofitted nearly all its refineries so that it can take the allegedly "hard to refine" heavy sour crude.
Not to mention, Suncor Energy's Commerce City, CO refinery is being retooled to accept Athabasca tar-sands oil directly from Alberta. And I fully suspect that ConocoPhillips and Tesoro have plans to have their Montana and North Dakota refineries do the same.
While it may not come fully in time for Nov. 7, I fully suspect that oil will be less than $40/bbl before the '08 presidential election.
Posted by: Brad S at August 30, 2006 8:33 AMDaniel Yergin has said sub-$40 all along.
Posted by: oj at August 30, 2006 8:36 AMWar worries will only inflate the price (in the face of full production) as long as there are repositories unfilled; I suspect we're rapidly approaching the point where every big oil storage facility in the world is full, and once that happens, it has to drop to the $40/bbl where price meets current demand, worry or not.
Posted by: Mike Earl at August 30, 2006 10:18 AMMeanwhile, in the far east oil prices have bumped up, not because of any actual rise, but because speculators have leased basically every friggin tanker in the world, banking on prices making a run at $100. Doesn't happen, prices fall. The speculators have filled storage all over the world with high priced oil, and are now takin' a whackin'.
Makes me feel bad. (Sort of).