Heating oil crisis becoming ominous -- from Gary North's site

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Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums

Summary and Comments

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Category:

Shipping_and_Transportation

Date: 2000-01-25 13:10:49

Subject: OPEC Slowdown and Just-in-Time Inventory Policies Have Created a Crisis

Link: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&S...

Comment:

The winter weather is not the only cause of the heating oil crisis. It's a supply crisis. Higher oil prices will create inflation index problems for the Federal Reserve System. The stock market is reacting negatively.

This is from PRNREWSWIRE (Jan. 25).

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More than 20,000 petitions from homeowners in the Northeast urging the Clinton-Gore administration to take immediate action to help relieve the heating oil energy crisis will be delivered to the White House on Wednesday (January 26) by HEAT USA, the country's largest fuel-buying cooperative. The petitions request that the President release at least 5% of the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR). Doing so would counter the dire economic consequences of OPEC's reduced production levels, major oil refiners' shortsighted "just-in-time" inventory systems and the natural gas utilities forcing their commercial "interruptible" customers to switch from natural gas to heating oil because of natural gas shortages.

Consumers are feeling the effects of a 90% increase in wholesale oil prices over the past week and a more than 200% increase from a year ago. HEAT USA spearheaded the petition drive to emphasize to the Clinton-Gore administration that the price increase is devastating to working families, the poor and seniors on fixed incomes.

"The President must act now to send a strong message that he will not allow OPEC and the multi-national oil refiners to profiteer at the expense of American consumers," states Tim Irving, Executive Director of HEAT USA. "Cutbacks in crude oil production and in refinery capacity have placed consumers in a very vulnerable position. Without immediate action by the President, our only hope of relief is a spell of warm weather, which is a lot to hope for in January." . . . .

Link: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&S...

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-- Patrick Lastella (Lastella1@aol.com), February 02, 2000

Answers

oinker: Your use of exclamation marks ("!!!") is redundant and highly overkill, thus diminishing the effectiveness. Try to be a little more creative with your use punctuation.

-- EricE (ready@for.anything), February 02, 2000.

Sorry, apparently piggy was deleted. Trust me, I was responding to a debunky post. I'm not crazy!!! (Oops, I should follow my own advice.)

-- EricE (ready@for.anything), February 02, 2000.

Deleted or not, the fact remains that only Pat can dig up a story a week old and call it a crisis. The original story is dated January 25, any other crisis would be in mop up stages by now.

-- don't really care (nunya@business.com), February 02, 2000.

Guys, what would Eve say?

Can we please leave the cheap shots alone, at least for a few days? (in honor of the dear departed debunky forum). Eve tried to make peace, and she got run off for her troubles.

-- Heckie (hlujan45@aol.com), February 02, 2000.


yes it was a big mistake to drive eve off.

she is much nicer person as eve than she is as LadyLogic.

-- mr.fubar (mr@fu.bar), February 02, 2000.



"The original story is dated January 25, any other crisis would be in mop up stages by now."

Hah! In mop up stages, eh. You obviously do not live in the Northeast. Mop up stages? Check the post on heating oil shortages today. Seems the crisis is getting worse, with several cities completely out......and another 10 days of cold weather on the way.

It's a crisis if you're the one trying to stay warm.

Unfortunately, these HEAT idiots can scream all they want......releasing oil from the SPR wouldn't do a bit of good since it would take weeks for it to be refined and reach market. Some of the distribution problems are because the product is shipped on barges: some rivers are frozen, and the weather has made barge traffic dangerous if it's even possible.

"The President must act now to send a strong message that he will not allow OPEC and the multi-national oil refiners to profiteer at the expense of American consumers.

Yeah, right. What's he going to do, bomb them? Or is he going to rant, "You can't do that to us. We're Americans?"

Bluster, and more bluster. The oil producing nations can set the price of oil where they want it, and no puffing of the chest by our president is going to change that.

-- (4@5.6), February 02, 2000.


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