Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Oil Nightmares Keep Me Up At Night


“Oil is going straight to $100,” said our favorite South American dictator Hugo Chavez last week, “No one can stop it.” Heh. If anyone can… it will probably be him. Markets have a way of punishing hubris of such magnitude.
“Chavez will continue shaking his fist at the U.S. every time he deems it appropriate to add a little fuel to the bull market in crude oil prices,” Dan Amoss continues. “He must do what he can to boost prices, because Venezuela’s state-owned oil company must make up in price what it’s losing in volume.”
Though Chavez claims to produce about 3.1 million barrels of oil per day, the International Energy Agency puts this figure at about 2.4 million barrels per day -- down from 2.6 million at this time last year.
“A few decades of underinvestment throughout the oil supply chain cannot be reversed in five or even 10 years,” concludes Dan. “And it just so happens that most of the world’s most productive oil capacity is either controlled by fanatical, autocratic regimes or at the center of violent struggles among rival factions.” Goldman Sachs analysts predict oil will strike $95 as early as the beginning of 2008.

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