[oddone]

Just a thougt. Ca 100million barrels of oil is now stored on oil tankers, paid at lower that current rates, bought by investors, China, etc. All permanent storage space filled to the brink - "Strategic Reserves".

What happens when the oil is actually needed somewhere, an actual delivery? Will the owners play the "waiting game"?

Supertankers filled to the brink everywhere, and NO spare carrying/freight capacity left?

I guess we will see a crazy oil price hike for desparate consumers before this oil price bubble implodes.

[oddone]

There is a definite drop in consumption world wide. Most oil in the world is traded in long term deals point to point. Surplus oil is stored on and off shore, or production is adjusted. When need for excess consumption arise, spot market tankers deliver at current rates. If all the spot market storage/freight capacity is removed, the oil price will hike at delivery point - that's when the speculators will make their move, controlling the tankers filled with oil. This is the present situation, and cause for hiking oil and freight (i.e. storage) prices.

This is Enron on a global scale, holding back abundant energy to hike the price.

It will of course be important to time the selling, as the oil price bubble we are seing now will eventually collapse.

[35Kas]

Collapse? Hardly.

It will be said that another oil bubble has burst and prices have come down to its real value, again.

But we all know this trickery is only thievery and the results will be marginally less apparent every time they pull it off. What happens when the supertankers are all underway and prices keep increasing?

[pup55]

Yes, the US has about 750 million barrels in the SPR, plus about 370 million in commercial surface storage... I think Europe and China have a similar amount..

the 100 million in spare/floating surface storage, if it really exists and is not a figment of some accountant's imagination.... is a bit more than a day's production (about 86 million barrels per day)....

But to the bigger question....If you are still lucky enough to have some green pieces of paper left in your bank account...... what would you rather have... a lot of green pieces of paper that are being printed at the rate of trillions per day, or some oil, particularly since there is a theory that it will never again be pumped at the same rate as it was two years ago.....

A shiny, yellow metal might be just as good.... or perhaps a shiny silver metal.... or any other kind of shiny metal...

dunno.