Yesterday, oil traded at $100 dollars. There’s been some interesting comment about this.

The first was, is that it seems that there was just a single three figure transaction… by a single trader who ‘overpaid’ so that they could be the first to buy oil at that price, and all the (rather non-sensical) bragging rights that go with it.
Mind you, the electronically traded price is going up again, and at the time of writing is $99.77.

In the originally BBC story, I liked this comment…

The entire focus on $100 oil is frivolous,” said Tim Evans at Citigroup Futures Research in New York.

Maybe, that should be read as

“I lost money betting that prices would go down and now I look like an idiot so I’m going to whine that the market is stupid.”

[Courtesy of Tess at the Powerswitch forum.]

Me… I would agree with this analysis

While daily price rises have been blamed on unrest in oil-supplying countries such as Nigeria, an underlying and significant factor has been an increase in demand from China and India.

“$100 is just the beginning,” said Zachary Oxman, senior trader at Wisdom Financial in California.

“This is kicking off what you are going to see this year. There will be huge moves up in gold and huge moves up in crude.”

In short… demand exceeding supply, no matter what OPEC keep telling us.

Mind you, somebody made some money out of all this!!! (and only just, a single trading day from loosing the bet)

Return to Coal

Hmmm, it will be interesting to see where the government’s priorities lie now…. business as usual vs CO2 and green objectives.

Mind you, interesting to see some actually say “We’re facing a real energy crunch”.