[Sixstrings]

Oil prices rising a week after SPR release

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Oil prices have surged in the last few days and are now less than a dollar from where they were when President Obama made the controversial decision to tap the nation's strategic reserve last Thursday.

On Thursday, West Texas Intermediate crude edged lower to $94.27 a barrel. But that's still nearly $5 higher than last week, when prices fell over 4% following the oil release announcement.

(snip)

Oil's stubborn refusal to trend lower since the United States and other industrialized nations announced they would flood the oil market with 60 million barrels of fuel over the next 30 days is raising questions over what's driving the market -- fundamentals or pure speculation?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/30/markets/oil_prices/

Huh, so the cooperative worldwide release of oil reserves only bought us a week.

Also note how CNN posits the question whether oil's "stubbornness" is due to speculators or "fundamentals." I'd say both -- speculators AND peak oil. The two go hand in hand.

[Pops]

Tom Whipple says the base price for the auction is $112 (the last 5 days avg price for LLS according to Reuters) and the oil can't be resold overseas without permission.

Why would the release make WTI fall?

[peeker01]

july 1(today) is the first day of release.

[Fishman]

I think the term one may be looking for is "pi$$ing in the wind". and that's our emergency stash, they're Pizzing

[Lore]

I think the term one may be looking for is "pi$$ing in the wind". and that's our emergency stash, they're Pizzing

I have to agree with you on this one, Fish. The release is the best they can come up with? If we are post-peak, on the downslope, and IEA is correct----then 6.7% yearly decline is a lose of 5.5 million barrels/day/year. The SPR release is no better than pissing in the wind.

This strange pointless SPR release feels just like the tipping point, official acknowledgement that peak is here. End of charade time.

I'm onboard with this and I believe much of the media has missed the significance of this act.

[John_A]

I think the term one may be looking for is "pi$$ing in the wind". and that's our emergency stash, they're Pizzing

I have to agree with you on this one, Fish. The release is the best they can come up with? If we are post-peak, on the downslope, and IEA is correct----then 6.7% yearly decline is a lose of 5.5 million barrels/day/year. The SPR release is no better than pissing in the wind.

This strange pointless SPR release feels just like the tipping point, official acknowledgement that peak is here. End of charade time.

I'm onboard with this and I believe much of the media has missed the significance of this act.

Lore, I have nothing but respect for you. One of the troopers here.

Agreed. Lore rocks. All the prepping is finally going to pay off.

[babystrangeloop]

Oil prices rising a week after SPR release

HA HA! the title of the CNN article is a big fat lie!

Not one drop of oil has been released yet.

How can they run such a headline?

CNN is such a piss-poor news site.

Why can't you stick to Reuters and Bloomberg and NYT and WSJ and respectable news sources that would not run articles about such baloney?

[John_A]

Agreed. Lore rocks. All the prepping is finally going to pay off.

Pay off how?

You aren't serious?

[babystrangeloop]

How can this be "AFTER the release" when they are still bidding on the oil?

"Apparently successful" US SPR bids 30.64 mln bbls"
Reporting by Jeffrey Kerr; Editing by Dale Hudson / Reuters / July 1, 2011

The "apparently successful" bids for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve's release of crude oil stocks totaled 30.64 million barrels at an average $107.19 a barrel, data released on Friday by the U.S. Department of Energy showed.

What a bargain, only $107.19 for the average bid. I wonder what the high bid was?

Click here for the table of bidders that shows the ranges:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/07/0 ... ilingsNews

[Fishman]

Pstarr, my interpretation of "prep paying off" is all those fruit trees, all that gardening, all that tool accumulation, etc starts to make a real difference in one's life now. Ferfal's blog makes it very real

[Bill Hicks]

I was talking to a colleague recently who does a lot of stock market trading on the side, and though he is better informed than most is still not Peak Oil aware. He now believes that we have entered a time in which triple digit oil prices are more or less here to stay except for the occasional dips.

I of course did nothing to dissuade him in that view.

[Bill Hicks]

Oil prices rising a week after SPR release

HA HA! the title of the CNN article is a big fat lie!

Not one drop of oil has been released yet.

How can they run such a headline?

CNN is such a piss-poor news site.

Why can't you stick to Reuters and Bloomberg and NYT and WSJ and respectable news sources that would not run articles about such baloney?

I think its funny that you consider Reuters, Bloomberg, NYT and WSJ to be "respectable" news sources. ANY corporate owned "news" source is automatically suspect and should never, ever be trusted.

[FarQ3]

Not too far from pi$$ing in our own pockets ... I have been reading PO for quite a while and also share the same opinion as most of you. This SPR release and the military build-ups around energy/oil security that we are witnessing. It's looking as though we have a developing 'energy race' which is approaching the risk of becoming 'world changing' for the worse.

[Geodesic]

The market is already pricing in the release whether it's started or about to start. The market is saying the release is insignificant.

Oil prices rising a week after SPR release

HA HA! the title of the CNN article is a big fat lie!

Not one drop of oil has been released yet.

[eXpat]

Oil will hit $150 in U.S. despite IEA -Guild

LONDON, July 6 (Reuters) - The price of physical crude oil will hit $150 a barrel this year in the United States due to unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, despite the emergency oil stock release coordinated by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a U.S. fund manager said.

Monty Guild, the chief executive of Guild Investment Management, said the IEA's move did not change oil's fundamentals.

"Our opinion continues to be oil prices will reach $150 barrels this year due to the fighting near Saudi Arabia," Guild told Reuters in a telephone interview.

He was referring to escalating violence in countries such as Syria and Yemen. These countries are very small producers but the market has been concerned about the spillover of the unrest to Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

North African producer Libya's oil supply has been disrupted since February because of its continuing civil war.

Last month, the IEA, advisor for 28 industrialised nations on energy policy, announced that member countries would release 60 million barrels of crude oil and refined oil products to cover the lost oil supply from Libya and to pull down high prices.

But international U.S. crude oil and ICE Brent crude futures have risen to the levels above where they were before the IEA announcement, after the sharp fall in the initial reaction to it.

"It has changed nothing. It is purely political," Guild said.

His oil price forecast refers to the average price to buy physical crude oil in the United States. Physical crude oil prices are $12-$15 per barrel higher than U.S. crude oil futures CLc1 depending on grades of oil and the geographical locations, he said.

U.S. crude futures were trading $96.93 a barrel by 1546 GMT on Wednesday.

Guild also said Saudi Arabia has surplus capacity to boost output volume when supply is tight but the quality of Saudi oil might limit its reach in the market.

"Their oil is sour and very heavy that is very expensive to refine. Therefore the prices they are offering are not good prices," he said. "Prices are not attractive because cost of transporting and refining the oil they are producing are so high, so they are not offering any bargain."
...
The fund currently has an approximate 25 percent allocation to the global oil and energy sector.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/06/oil-guild-idUSL6E7I61MW20110706?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews&rpc=401

[Daniel_Plainview]

Saudi Arabia has surplus capacity to boost output volume when supply is tight but the quality of Saudi oil might limit its reach in the market. "Saudi Arabia's oil is sour and very heavy that is very expensive to refine."

I wonder what percentage of Saudi's current oil production is heavy/sour? If SA has already used up its light/sweet crude, then, in terms of net energy, we're much closer to "game over" than SA would lead us to believe.