[PeakOiler]

The fourth quarter is halfway over. The two-minute warning is getting nearer.

I'll be happy with third place in this game.

The hurricanes never showed up in the GOM this year to make oil shipments more challenging which could have added $5-10 to the high price.

Revi and I are going to make pancakes with his homegrown maple syrup and with my homegrown pecans soon! He'll make his at his house, and I'll make mine at my house. LOL!

[pup55]

This has been a fun contest.... and OF2 has demonstrated his respectable forecasting skills by being in the lead for many months....

[PeakOiler]

I will post another scorecard next week since it seems there may be a new high price.
Seagypsy and OilFinder2 have been flip-flopping out of 1st and 2nd place over the last several weeks as oil went from the low to mid $80s a few times.

[pup55]

FYI there are 20 trading sessions left in the year. The all time records for price changes over a 20-day period on an absolute dollar basis and also on a percentage basis are as follows:
abs dollar percentage change
max 21.27 68%
min -46.67 -44%
stdev 4.22 10%

There is roughly a 2/3 chance of a 4 dollar price swing either positive or negative in the next 20 days, or on a percentage basis, a 10% price swing....

so I would have to say there is a lot of game yet to be played....

[Revi]

I conceded defeat and sent the maple syrup to Peak Oiler. We'll both be eating some pecans and pancakes this week. Thanks! It does seem like oil wants to keep going up. I just paid $3.11 for regular gas and it may go up another 14 cents if Trilby Lundberg is right and the price per barrel holds at around 89 or so.

[PeakOiler]

Revi's maple syrup is delicious! Cool bottle too! Once it's emptied and cleaned, it will find a place on the shelf next to my shot glass collection!



Thanks again Revi. You are a true gentleman and a good sport.

[Revi]

The way oil is going I may have conceded too early! It's over 90 today and it looks like it may hold. We'll see.. There's no way it would have hit my guess of $157 before the end of the year, anyway. I think I'll try some pancakes this Saturday with Peak Oiler's delicious pecans and our maple slurp. Thanks!

It made it fun to watch the oil prices. What will next year bring? I think I'll try my guess at the upper end and keep the low end around 90 and see how it pans out.

[dohboi]

I'm glad SOMEBODY else is noticing what is happening to oil prices today and this week.

Do you think we'll go above $100 before year's end?

[Revi]

It would be hard to get to around $100. That means it would have to go up around 50 cents a day, and it seems like it hits a certain point and pulls back. It could happen, but we'd need some kind of event to make it happen. If it follows the price of gold and silver, it could happen I suppose.

[PeakOiler]

Here's the latest scorecard:



No, I don't think we'll see $157 per barrel this year, but it looks like triple digits next year for sure...

[SeaGypsy]

High $92
Low $68
Close $87

Based on current USD$ values. This year will test price control mechanisms like no other has. There is a strong possibility of US inflation/ hence my base on today's dollar values.
Given how the price bounced in 09 tankers will sit out a dip below $70; above $90 capped wells will open. My logic for what it's worth!

Very simple formula; basicly I figured that bailout 1 had enabled a version of BAU to continue in which an attempt at price stabilisation would be a huge effort but likely would be achieved at 'new normal' range.

The price is still worrysome of course. The following year I think will be more difficult to predict. Further demise of the $USD is a given (QE2/3?); thus overall price increases are inevitable. Freight train China along with the Tigers and some others will take up any slack in the market, along with investors generally.

If TPTB have their way, the new normal range will stick for some time; as in maybe another whole year.

I will hold off on my predictions for 2011 until the thread PeakOiler puts it up.

[SeaGypsy]

So far it looks like the Cornucopian types have been more correct about 2010 than the Doomers. In general.

The year isn't over yet. Quantitative easing (i.e. printing money) has just begun. Devaluing the dollar is bound to make oil and other commodities more expensive for purchasers using dollars.

Actually it looks like I caned the cornies; despite being a dieoff believing petri dish dweller dashing around south east Asia on a quest for the perfect renewable yacht making process.

I am currently working centrally on projects designed to outlive money; and oil.

[sparky]

.
Next year fate of the U.S. dollar is pure conjecture .
there is a currency war on with the feds and treasury wanting to drive the greenback down to undercut China
That make the price of oil denominated in $ hostage to the financiers
but there is little which can be done about it
triple digit oil price for next year seems a good bet ,
is there some interest in doing it for each quarter or would it be too hard to tabulate ?
I'm thinking an end of the quarter price end of March , June , September ,December
never mind the lowest or highest since a lot happen in twelve months

[vtsnowedin]

Hey I'm moving up. Last year I was dead last or next to it. It is a good thing I don't make my living trading in oil futures. If that story in the FT about oil breaking $100 has any weight to it I might move up a few more places this year.
The part about the demand side of the story has me anticipating the industry trying to meet that demand. If we have indeed past peak they will not be able to do it for more then a short while. The realization that they can't increase production will be a reality check to the market.

[Revi]

I've moved up a few places too. The price of oil seems to be taking a little breather, along with all other commodities. I think next year we may see some spikes, but I'll bet we've seen the top of this run up.

We are over $3 for gas around here right now. I was thinking that we'll think this was cheap gas pretty soon. I would still pay over $10 for gas for my chainsaw. If I was transporting something like wood, etc. even if it was $10 a gallon I would still be getting more btu's than I spend in gas getting wood to my house from my woodlot.

Soon we'll be thinking like that.

[SeaGypsy]

Reading back through the thread and giving it some thought; it appears there was a dystopian tendency. I think it shows that even the extremely well educated find seperating emotions from ideas difficult when it comes to conjecture.

Interestingly the average low and close were not too far wide, but speculated highs were out of the ball park. Whether this reflects wishfull thinking by investors or doom based prophesy I can hardly guess.
The main factor most got wrong is the relative lack of volatility.

Oil has by stealth become the central currency. Not in the way we all know about here, but in the way it is traded. There is enormous vested interest in stability of oil prices.
On a global scale oil price stability is more important than any currency.
No business of any size can flourish when core costs fluxuate wildly. Banks more than anyone understand this. They have the reins of government now around the globe. They can change currencies on a whim; but they know the one currency with which none of their customers can do without: stable oil.
Cheap oil is gone; that game is over.
Stable oil is the new game.

Of course the USA would like to fix the price they 'agreed to' and have actual stability at $75 a barrel roughly; this is an impossibility in peak oil. The stuff is going to get more expensive, a lot more; in real terms. Meanwhile the fed will likely devalue the dollar by an across the board 10% more this coming year.
The euro hasn't done too well or the british pound, along with the dollar in a bumpy slide against asian currencies; meaning that the price difference in dollars is substantially greater than in emerging market currencies.

Labour is being repriced globally and oil is becoming the key measure of value; in terms of work. Globalism is getting scientific. Nationalism has become virtually irrelavent; we are all cogs in the global industrial machine. Remember all those nutbag anti NWO protests that got steamrolled over the last few decades? Well, they were right. And there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

Short of a mega war, we are looking at the slow crash of the west, the moderation of the rise (but a rise nonetheless) in Asia.
This may just end with one day there just aint no air left to breath.

[Cog]

Well I moved from 11th to 8th so I'm happy with the results. All I need now is a spike to $110 and then I'm good.

[SeaGypsy]

Here's the latest scorecard:

if it goes down 1 more buck; my total error might go under 3

[TheDude]

The main factor most got wrong is the relative lack of volatility.

Souped up version of a chart I might have posted here recently. Volatility increases with price historically, if you chart back through the decades. No surprise there, price spikes and traders dogpile to make some quick $$$$; it's odd to see the price creep back up and volatility decrease though, as happened in the last year. Looks as if that happened up to '02, when things bumped around for the next 5 years before the rocket achieved escape velocity. So we're headed back to a new normal of ca. $90/bbl? With a steady creep up to ca. 4x that figure? Or?

I like the volatility profile here - looks like a truncated volcanic crater, the most famous example being Crater Lake, formerly Mount Mazama. And we know how that thing wrapped up its career. It isn't extinct, either - you still have hot springs on the bottom of the lake.

[SeaGypsy]

The main factor most got wrong is the relative lack of volatility.

So we're headed back to a new normal of ca. $90/bbl? With a steady creep up to ca. 4x that figure? Or?

I like the volatility profile here - looks like a truncated volcanic crater, the most famous example being Crater Lake, formerly Mount Mazama. And we know how that thing wrapped up its career. It isn't extinct, either - you still have hot springs on the bottom of the lake.

Depends whose money you are using. Margins look like remaining tight; leverage is likely to eat up profits on short trades. On the other hand probably the best investment in the world right now would have to be a tanker of oil hauled up in a demurage free port with a 3rd world crew and a bit of oversight. I'm only half joking.

Metaphoricly speaking;
I am working on a design for a very personalised yacht.
The design fits under the heading of 'proa' or outrigger.

Overall speed is dictated by the length of the main hull under a ratio of 1/17; it is designed like a knife, a piercer. It is the engine of the vessel; where the outrigger is much shorter and designed to plane alongside the main hull like a surfboard. Latteral traction is almost all in the main hull, but it is controlled from the smaller planing hull.Too close together, not enough leverage for stability, too far apart, impossible to control due to drag leverage. The whole thing is dependent on rigging. It can sail in either direction and steered by sail position relative to the wind, without a rudder.

Functionally this kind of alignment is what's being strived for; with Asia providing the momentum and European/ American bankers planing alongside.
The oil nations are the ropes holding the whole thing together.

I personally think the whole gig is rigged.

Barring a black swan event (impossible either way); the controlled jacking of prices will continue at about double the pace of inflation in the $USD.
So, yes, $90 is the new normal.