|
about me
Name Katherine Kirby Neubert Birthday 09.13.87 Email katherineneubert@hotmail.com -- writer, jolter, aspiring photojournalist.
friends
alexis design the daily collegian the daily jolt the new york times wordswift |
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Last week, John C. Zehler Jr. predicted that oil refiners would emphasize production of diesel over gasoline in a chase for greater profit. This did, and future prices went down.That would mean that instead of the cost of diesel being nearly $5 a gallon now, with gas at $4, these prices would swap and gas would be $5 a gallon, with diesel at $4. Scary? According to The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration’s weekly inventory report, crude oil inventories plummeted 8.88 million barrels, the biggest drop since Sept. 17, 2004. “Temporary delays” in unloading tankers because of fog that closed Gulf Coast ports are to blame for this decline, said the department. Then, regulators made public an investigation into U.S. oil markets, “because of today’s unprecedented market conditions,” with a focus on possible price manipulation. Even after yesterday’s decline, crude prices have risen more than 42 percent since the probe began in early December. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also announced a handful of initiatives designed to increase transparency of U.S. and international energy futures markets. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, prices fell $4.41 to settle at $126.62 a barrel, making it the lowest settlement in two weeks and the biggest single-day price drop since March 19. The magnitude of the day’s price decline has suggested to some analysts that this unforgiving momentum that pushed prices over $135 just one week ago may be in fact running out of steam. "This was the first time we've had a bearish reaction," to news that in the past surely would have driven prices higher, said James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla., based trading firms Liberty Trading Group and OptionSellers.com High prices for fuel have cut consumers’ appetite for it, therefore causing demand to fall slightly during the past four weeks, EIA data indicated.On the flip side – could this be necessarily all bad? With such high gas prices, won’t people be forced to think more “green?” Isn’t that what everyone is in such a huff about these days, making our environment and source for energy more eco-friendly? "Kat" [
10:39 AM ] |