Monday, March 10, 2008

Excuses, Excuses

For a good example of how the mainstream media has explained the surging price of oil for the past few years, here's a Reuters article:

Oil rises on cold weather

Oil rose on Monday, bolstered by a bout of cold weather in the United States, but prices stayed below the record high of above $106 struck in the previous session.

U.S. light crude for April delivery which rose as much as 45 cents, was up 26 cents at $105.41 a barrel by 2332 GMT.

"The cold snap in the United States over the weekend and the closure of one of the Mexican ports were supportive of oil prices," said David Moore, a resource analyst at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

A late-season winter storm slammed into the Ohio Valley on Saturday, with freezing rain, ice and sleet forcing flight delays and cancellations at airports and forecasters predicting the storm to head towards the U.S. Northeast.

Snow totals from Ohio to western New York could exceed 15 to 20 inches by Sunday, the national Weather Service said.

A three-day closure of one of Mexico's three main crude oil ports, Dos Bocas, also underpinned oil's gains. Although Dos Bocas port has reopened on Monday analysts said expectations of more wild weather in the Gulf of Mexico in the coming days were lending support to prices.

Mexico, the world's No. 9 exporter of crude oil and a top three supplier to the United States, has seen its crude exports repeatedly disrupted in recent months by bad weather and storms in the Gulf, often resulting in its crude shipments being halted for days at a time.

Oil's surge to a lifetime high of $106.54 a barrel on Friday was helped by a combination of a record low U.S. dollar, a sharp drop in U.S. crude stocks and OPEC's decision not to increase output.

But a rebound in the dollar in late trading on Friday helped to ease oil off earlier highs.

Easing tensions between OPEC member Venezuela, a top oil exporter to the United States, and neighbor Colombia, also kept oil price gains in check.

The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela ended a border dispute on Friday, after a week of regional diplomacy in the face of hostile rhetoric and troop build-ups.

Still, some analysts say expectations of more dollar weakness, continued tensions in Nigeria and the Middle East as well as increased speculative funds pouring into commodities could keep pushing oil prices to new highs.

Note the headline and the first few grafs. It's only towards the end that the dollar is mentioned. Mexico is barely in the top ten of world oil exporters, but a temporary closure of just one of its ports gets more ink than the dollar. For the past $70 or so, it's been unrest in Nigeria, refinery problems in Texas, Turkish-Kurd tensions, pipeline disruptions in Iraq, Venezuelan jawboning, fog at U.S. ports, and "ole reliable": a storm in the North Sea. And if there's an extremely rare time when none of those apply, a shocker: cold weather in late winter!

As long as the denial continues, so will the problem.

14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

They could have left out all but the last paragraph and it would have been just as informative an article.

3/10/2008 10:54 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Gee, once the heat of summer is upon us, and gas prices have rised to an average of close to $4/gallon, I guess it will be difficutl to blame it on winter weather.

3/10/2008 12:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not to worry guys, the Fed just released the new $3 bill!!

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w122/wboxerw19/Mynt_euro2.jpg

3/10/2008 1:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And, of course, this is more "proof" to the factless that global warming is a leftist conspiracy.

3/10/2008 1:38 PM  
Blogger LFC said...

'We believe in a strong dollar policy,' Bush told reporters at the White House, adding that the value of the dollar will ultimately be reflected in 'the ability of the economy to grow economically.'

-- Forbes, February 28, 2008

Nice to know he believes in a strong dollar policy ... and that the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes.

I'm also very optimistic about the "ability of the economy to grow economically." Is that as compared to the economy growing organically? Or maybe synthetically?

3/10/2008 1:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A video has recently come to my attention that sheds quite a bit of light on our current circumstances. Google Michael Ruppert or The Truth and Lies of 9/11. It offers a fascinating look into our global economy and what moves it. No exploding towers or remote-controlled jets here; just sober analysis of evidence by a former L.A. narcotics detective.

I would be very interested to know the reactions of readers (and the website owner!) here to this film.

3/10/2008 4:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A video has recently come to my attention that sheds quite a bit of light on our current circumstances. Google Michael Ruppert or The Truth and Lies of 9/11. It offers a fascinating look into our global economy and what moves it. No exploding towers or remote-controlled jets here; just sober analysis of evidence by a former L.A. narcotics detective.

I would be very interested to know the reactions of readers (and the website owner!) here to this film.

3/10/2008 4:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...oh, and don't forget -- people then go and blame the rising costs of everything else (most especially food, but also transportation costs for every other tangible consumer product) on the rise in oil. Which is somehow supposed to re-assure us that this is all a very unusual situation which will just "go away" sometime soon.

Then, periodically, a big oil company (or an oil-producing nation, or the Feds) release their strategic stockpile, and the price blips temporarily down.

(Presumably the Feds do this to keep the sheeple passive and locked into the economic status quo; companies or other countries do it in order to indulge in profit-taking.)

So periodically the price falls. A bit. Always after the "summer driving season" is over and consumers have already emptied their wallets. But -- problem solved, as far as the media is concerned; recycle those old articles about an "oil glut" and "plummeting prices no longer justify exploration".

3/12/2008 1:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kilfarsnar,

I read Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon in Dec 04. Revelatory. I'm assuming it covers much the same ground as the video, though probably in a little more depth.

3/12/2008 5:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uncle Toby,

I have not read Crossing the Rubicon. But it is certainly the next book I will buy. I have to see if it is available at B&N or Borders ( I want to pay cash for it, can't be too careful these days). But yes, I believe the video covers a lot of the same ground.

One of the interesting things 9/11 precipitated in my life is a desire to understand the hidden world that I live in. It caused me to realize that there are machinations afoot which affect my life that are beyond my understanding. I know now that I don't live in the world I thought I did. And I have become almost obsessed with discovering how our society actually functions.

Revelatory indeed...

3/13/2008 12:51 PM  
Blogger Chris said...

kilfarsnar: "I want to pay cash for it, can't be too careful these days..."

I hate to break it to you, if they are watching, then you just flew yourself onto the radar, without having to pay cash for a controversial piece of literature. Thank you GW and gang for warrentless "wire" tapping...It won't be too long before simply speaking out against warrentless search and seizure is considered terrorism.

3/14/2008 1:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chris f.,

I dig that. I figure I'm relatively anonymous on this board. I post from behind a corporate firewall, so my actual IP address is hidden. They would know the company, but who's to say I didn't hack their wireless network (I have been known to wardrive now and again)? ;-) However, I do use this rather unique screen name elsewhere. So through some cross referencing my identity could probably be determined. Perhaps it's time for a new nom de guerre...

-Kilfarsnar

3/14/2008 6:44 PM  
Anonymous viagra online said...

I read that the oil price is more expensive every day. There are several reasons, mainly because lack of resource

1/18/2011 4:57 PM  
Anonymous Phentermine said...

In my view everybody may go through it.

6/07/2011 10:47 AM  

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