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Sunnyvale, California --------------------------------------------- I would encourage everyone to start posting photos of the rising gas prices in their local neighborhoods and start a social movement to bring attention to this artificial and greedy price hike. Please post photos in the PAIN AT THE PUMP photo pool --------------------------------------------- Last week the price of crude oil reached about $130 a barrel after spiking to $140 briefly. The immediate cause? Guesses by oil man T. Boone Pickens and Goldman Sachs that the price could go to $150 and $200 a barrel respectivly in the near future. They were referring to what can be called the hoopla pricing party on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (NYMEX) Oil was at $50 a barrel in January 2007, then $75 a barrel in August 2007. Now at $130 or so a barrel, it is clear that oil pricing is speculative activity, having very little to do with physical supply and demand. An essential product-petroleum-is set by speculators operating on rumor, greed, and fear of wild predictions. Deborah Fineman, president of Mitchell Supreme Fuel Co. in Orange, New Jersey, summed up the scene: "Energy markets have been dictated for too long by hedge funds and speculators, who artificially manipulate the numbers for their own benefit. The current market isn't based on the sound principles of supply and demand but it is being rigged by companies and speculators who are jacking up prices for their own greed." Harry C. Johnson, former banker who worked for many years inside Big Oil and ran his own small oil company in Oklahoma, blames the CFTC, the Department of Energy, the Administration, and Congress, as "asleep at the switch on an issue that is probably costing U.S. consumers $1 billion per day." He cites "some industry experts, who profit greatly from the high price of crude, and have stated openly that the worldwide economic price of rude, absent peculators, would be around $50 to $60 per barrel. Source
By: _Faraz Copyright © All Rights Reserved
Taken: June 6, 2008
Uploaded: June 6, 2008
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