I watch charts, the daily crude futures chart looks poised for a downturn. Hope it takes place soon for the sake of our gas guzzling 8's.

It will never fall to what everyone is expecting.

The world has changed. U.S. is not longer the largest consumers of oil. We have to share that title with China and India and they are only in their infancy of industrial development. Imagine when they reach the medium phase of their development and start to buy lots of cars!!

Don't get your hopes up. Days of cheap oil is long gone.

He's in Singapore, so different application of pricing? I do agree with the US prices never dropping as historically low again, but have no basis or facts to back that with. Just blind thought and intuition.

Have to disagree....IMO, the high price of oil is based on a risk premium due to potential supply threats. Has nothing to do right now with demand in China and India, both of these nations are nowhere near the ability to afford cars in every household like the western world. However, they might be in another 20 years or so, well China, not India, but their industrial energy requirements are served with coal cause 1) they don't care about environmental issues at present and 2) both nations have plenty of coal. Oil generating nations can in aggregate still easily serve the world's demands, but if you cut off a few big one's because of war, terrorist activities, civil unrest, etc. then the supply premium starts to make sense. Hence, why we see $55 pb crude. Sure, crude could run higher, but commodities tend to spike up and finally subside over time as the fundamentals catch up with the fear.

How much is a gallon of high test for you Genesis?

Dunno, I only think in litres :D So what's your point?

Per litre would be fine also...just curiosity as compared to US pricing. A Dutch friend of mine recently told me he was paying more than the equivalent of $5 US for high test.

I have to disagree also.

China is chewing to so much energy resources it is starting to affect the global economy. Don't doubt that China hungers after petro products. They are really working hard to make technologies like liquified coal to get diesel fuel happen. They in a huge spat with Japan and Russia over an oil pipeline project that Russia wants to build for the Asia market. They want it to empty into China and Japan wants it to go to Japan. Their car market is seeing double digit growth and, at least, in the last quarter was the only place where car manufacturers were making any profits. If it wasn't for the central governments attempts to cool the economy, the car market will still see strong growth.

The instability in Iraq is a temporal thing (I hope at least.) Remember the Saudis use to be able to be able to increase production to reduce prices. Now there is talk that they can't physically increase production anymore.

$40+ per barrel oil is here to stay.

Don't underestimate the effect of the Rising Asian economies. I can't even get quotes to last two days on any metal related products.

Funny thing is now there is a shortage of skilled labors in China. My wive's Chinese suppliers are having a heck of time filing positions even with 30 to 50% pay increases. This observations was backed up by a recent Businessweek article on labor shortage in China.

I think $40 a barrel is a little rich, but $35 oil is about where the price should be minus all the "terrorism premium" crap. I'm in the energy industry and I live in Houston so I follow things pretty closely. the has been a fundemental demand shift as it relates to China and India, and short of a major worldwide recession (thats bad) we're stuck with oil in the 30's for the forseeable future. However, Oil prices and gasoline prices are not linear, as there are many things that go into making gasoline.

You wanna know what would really help with prices? One standard in terms of formulation for the whole country. Every damn state has its own version of what gas should be, so we can't always move gas from one part of the country to another when there is a shortage. The good news is that there has been so much refinery consolidation, they are starting to take matters into there own hands.

I hear you guys, but have two points...first is that any demand for a commodity will reach an apex and subside, question is for how long will the demand rise. In the case of China, they are buying up all the world's supply of iron to meet construction demand...it's unbelievable really. I say that because they have the largest coal producing mines around, but can't convert it to iron fast enough so they import. Not sustainable in the long run, steel prices rise and economics (will eventually) take over. Interest rates rise in China, the Yuan will eventually strengthen as a result (due to currency flows), the peg with the US dollar breaks and then China is no longer competitive on world markets. Demand in China slips and corrects.

Second point is that the world will eventually realize that the risk premium factored into high oil prices is false stated. Fear (and greed) is driving the premium. These forces always correct when some "uncertain" shock becomes even less certain. Sure, I don't know when that will happen, but it will happen. I'm just thinking that it will happen sooner than later, contrary to what you guys may be thinking if you believe that high oil prices are here to stay.

Oil prices will fall about the same time that California real estate prices fall -- when supply exceeds demand. Don't hold your breath on either one happening anytime soon.

it's not related to CA real estate prices...believe me, it's a global concern. You should see the prices of real estate in Singapore, will make you happy you live in CA.

Correct me if I'm wrong but there hasn't been a major oil find in a very long time. Shell recently got in trouble for overstating how much reserves it has left. It kept saying it had 100 years worth of reserve since the 1960's (or something like that) but it has had a major oil field find in ages.

Oil, in the form of gasoline and other like products, cannot be recycled, unlike steel. Once it's used up it's gone. With current technology the lead time to produce oil is like 10,000,000 years.

The long term trends are clear, oil prices will continue to rise.

BTW the corrections that the market is putting on oil due to risk is very reasonable. Think about all the major oil producers and tell me where they are located. The only semi stable countries are Russia and Saudi Arabia. Other major oil producers, Venezula, Kenya, Sudan, Iran, and Iraq, aren't exactly going through good times right now. They have some serious issues that must resolve and in the next 20 years, I doubt they can be solved. I think finally people are waking up to the fact that they need to adjust oil prices for risk. It only makes sense. I serious doubt people will realize that this risk adjustment isn't necessary, especially since Iran recently decided to start playing with nukes.

We might see a slight drop in the near future as some of the still damaged offshore rigs are fixed and more oil flows from Africa. But it's only a matter of time before we are in the same boat as the rest of the world, at $5 a gallon.

Uh... they fell today...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=749&e=1&u=/nm/20041027/bs_nm/markets_oil_dc

The charts....they never lie :D

When we aren't in Opec's back pocket.

Man, wish I had taken the short oil trade when I first posted....crude futures are now at $52 vs $55 when I started this thread. Have a look at this chart, crude futures are poised for further weakness in the short-term.....