Oil & Gasoline market analysis

http://pub3.ezboard.com/fdownstreamventurespetroleummarkets.showMessage?topicID=1028.topic

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000

Answers

CRAP. I couldn't get past this without saying: WHO CARES? Same old, same old "...they're not telling us the truth. I have the "truth" and you betterl lissssssen up, yah hear.OR ELSE".

Last year y2k, this year AWL.

From: <murrayv@m...>
Date: Sun Jul 16, 2000 11:32am
Subject: Gasoline prices - Oil crisis?I



Long message.
I have recently sent the following letter to some friends as noted.
Perhaps some of you will assist in spreading the word. Sorry about
the word-wrap problem. The referenced attachment is Gasoline prices -
Oil crisisII. Murray Duffin

Dear Friends,

        I am writing this letter because I believe the general public
is not being kept
informed on a very important subject, and this may be one way to
remedy that situation.
The current obvious symptom of the issue is high gasoline prices.
The causes are
more complex and long term than we are being told, and the remedies
proposed so far
by various politicians are short term palliatives at best.

        I can understand the reluctance of politicians to tell us the
unpalatable truth in
an election year, but the near silence of the media is less easily
explained. Perhaps it
is simply the impossibility of telling the whole story in a 30 second
sound bite. Also,
there are two sharply opposed points of view and perhaps they
don't
know which to
choose.

        As you know, I am not an alarmist, and I am not given to
writing this kind of
letter. I have spent many months and many tens of hours researching
both sides of this
issue, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, and reaching my
own conclusions on
what appears to be nearest to the truth. To keep this letter fairly
brief, I am providing
only a little of the explanation and the key conclusions. For those
of you who wish to
do your own research, I have attached a much longer and more detailed
explanation,
and a bunch of references.

        There are two aspects of the story - near term price related,
and longer term
strategic.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 18, 2000.

Now Y'all.. don't be forgitting. FILE THE ABOVE LINK UNDER:

FORM NUMBER 666 VER. 69.0 **FILL IN YOUR OWN "DISASTER"***

OR DON'T. http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003VxI

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 18, 2000.

The price of oil will tell the story.

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000.

``We are fed up with it. It just adds to the confusion. The market held the belief that OPEC would at some stage release 500,000 barrels a day. Now this just clouds the issue,'' said Tony Machacek, of oil brokers Prudential Bache. ``Now we will just wait on the sidelines.''

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000718/bs/markets_oil_dc_81.html

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000.

Cave Man, if I'm reading Charlie correctly here (and I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong), he is once against using short-term political/price swings to try to disprove and denigrate long-term physical trends. I've noticed that he does not address long-term Hubbert Curve issues per se, perhaps because he lumps the whole idea in with y2k doomerism, a type of denial meme, if you will. Odd that he seems to be the only person on the board, besides you and me, who takes a regular interest in the topic at all. By the way, do you post over at the Long Waves forum? I wonder if that's where Charlie found the letter, or if he's started browsing Bruce's eList.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 18, 2000.

Oops, meant downstreamer's board instead of Long Waves, of course, although I found the letter posted there as well.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 18, 2000.

Cash,

I lurk at both of those forums, very interesting stuff.

I think this subject suffers from the "cry wolf syndrome", people have heard this before and they are not listening.

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000.

Don't put words in my mouth. The DISTORTION of the current imbalance in oil has **NOTHING** to do with Y2k. If it did, the Y2k Fear Pushers would be publishing data all over the place. The FACTS ARE SIMPLE: OPEC IS SQUEEZING EVERY LAST PENNY OUT OF CONSUMERS THEY CAN.

If you do exactly the opposite of what "most people believe" you will usually make some money if you understand market technical analysis and know how to place stop loss and stop gain orders.

When Oil was $12-14, there wasn't a Professional in an Oil Company in DFW who believed it would stay down below $15 for more than a few months. It was only a question of time before the supply dried up. Conversely, DID YOU THINK THAT OPEC WOULD ALLOW **FREE FALL** TO 22- 27?? THE PRICE IS BEING LOWERED "GENTLY" AND THE TRADING CHARTS ALL SHOW THE BACK OF THE PRICE RISE IS BROKEN AND THE TREND IS "NEUTRAL TO BEARISH". THE **MARKET** KNOWS ALL. NO HUMAN DOES.

When OIL was LOW,,, the Press ran story after story about "rig count down", "oil at $5 to 7 Possible??" and "Texas oilfield crisis" Blah, blah.

Now we get the reverse and SUCKERS believe this. A Stock Broker has an "opinion" about OIL PRICES ?? WHY? Does he handle Option and contracts for customers for "commissions"?? NAH. He is a pure "humanitarian" just "informing". AND STIRRING UP INTEREST IN HIS MARKET.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 18, 2000.

Charlie, just out of curiousity, why the constant references to y2k? No one is talking about it here anymore except you, especially as it pertains to oil supplies/prices. So far as I know, the Hubbert Curve is y2k compliant ;-).

Recent news, for the interested.

Oil prices jump

Source: CNNfn

Publication date: 2000-07-18

NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Crude oil prices ended sharply higher Tuesday after OPEC's president said it would not boost production at the end of the month because prices had slipped below the upper range of its price target.

U.S. light sweet crude for September delivery settled at $30.64, up 88 cents on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, crude futures on the International Petroleum Exchange for September delivery settled at $29.32, up 76 cents.

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=121 18529&ID=cnniw&scategory=Energy

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 19, 2000.

Hey, Cash..how long have it been since you lost use of your brain?

OIL IS 1/3 the price in REAL DOLLARS vs. 1980. The Oil Zombies and fear pushers don't have a case. Oil "should" be about $50-60/bbl. according to one of the leading Oil "experts" Yergin who wrote both Energy Futures after the 2nd shortage of the 1970s(predicting the world would run out) and "The Prize" (demanding "cleaner energy" and the rest of the Greenie BS while ignoring his decade earlier claim).

See the title of this forum: "Time Bomb 2000". It came from Yourdon's TimeBomb2000 I.

People have claimed that the run up in oil was from lack of production and one reason was the Y2k CDC problem. It was the ONLY hope they had since little or no impact of the "diaster" was felt even in countries that didn't do a damn thing about their computers. To this day DOOM ZOMBIES blame what ever they can find wrong with the world on the Y2k CDC problem.

OIL is UP BECAUSE OPEC **DRIED UP THE SUPPLY TO RAISE PRICES**. There is no "dwindling supply" as all the "Eco-Assholes" and the "Sustainable Green Zombies" claim.

Oil prices rise and fall on pure supply and demand. PERIOD.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 19, 2000.

Sigh. Charlie, we try and we try and we try, and you still just don't get it. You appear to be so obsessed with the y2k meme that you can't see beyond it. Oil may well be 1/3 the 1980 price in real dollars -- because oil prices spiked in 1979/80 when the shah of Iran was overthrown. That's like comparing prices now to prices in autumn 1973, during the Yom Kipper War, and just prior to the Gulf War in 1991 after Iraq occupied Kuwait. Additionally, no one here -- not me, not Cave Man, or anyone else -- has ever said that *current* prices and supplies are anything but politically motivated. OPEC countries had to cut supplies and raise prices last year because they were going broke on $11/barrel oil. What is interesting is that, despite those cuts, the only OPEC nations with any excess capacity these days are Saudi, Kuwait, and UAE. I don't know where you're finding the "people" who claim the CDC is the reason, because the uptrend in prices began well before January.

As for long-term trends, the dwindling supplies for the future, the people commenting on them aren't eco-assholes or sustainable green zombies -- they're top of the line petroleum engineers and geologists. See Scientific American, March 1998, for just a taste. If anything, the enviro crowd is largely ignoring the whole thing because it doesn't fit their political agendas. As with any controversial issue, especially one as vital to so many interests as this one, there are those who argue the other side, that oil supplies will last forever. There are also doomers who need another apocalypse to hitch their neurosis to, now that y2k has been such a bust, and the larger discussion (the one you're apparently unaware of) has seen an influx of them in the last few months. I find that personally disappointing because they alter the tone and marginalize the topic, sort of like the doomsters did on csy2k back in 97/98.

Given the store you set by Texans, you might find this interesting:

Energy Prices: Chicken Little Speaks

by Steve Andrews, Denver-based energy columnist/consultant

(written 6/20/00; updated 7/13/00)

Meet Matt Simmons, aka Chicken Little. Hes president of Simmons & Co. International, a banking firm in Houston that services the worldwide oil and gas industry. His vision of energy prices is bleak, and he isnt alone. When it comes to natural gas prices for home heating, Simmons says the sky is starting to fall. Short-term, mid-term, maybe even long term.

As for gassing up your car or truck, Simmons laments, "There is no evidence that we learned any real lessons from the two painful Energy Shocks of the 1970s, nor is there evidence that such an occurrence could not repeat itself. In fact, we were far better prepared to handle an Energy Crisis in 1973 than we are in 2000."

When Simmons or a member of his 100-person firm speaks, the oil and gas industry listens. He's been a keynote speaker at numerous international oil conferences. For the last six years, he's penned the forecast feature for World Oil magazine. In an era when the government's price prognosticators couldn't have been more wrong, Simmons is nearly always close. That's what makes his current vision for natural gas and oil prices so sobering.

I won't cut and paste the rest, if only to avoid eye strain. Not sure where this was published originally, but it's now available at several places on the web, one of them being: http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/longwaves/jul00/msg00406.html . You'll like that forum, Charlie, because it includes several rebuttal attempts.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 20, 2000.

Thank you, Cash. Interesting info, even more interesting links in your and Cave Man's posts. Better -- that CPR hasn't responded. Guess dealing with facts instead of spouting infantile name calling is beyond him -- especially when the facts prove him wrong.

-- coast watcher (coast@watcher.com), July 23, 2000.