Oil futures shot higher Tuesday, closing above $100 for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand. At the pump, gas prices rose further above $3 a gallon.
There was no single driver behind oil’s sharp price jump; investors seized on an explosion at a 67,000 barrel per day refinery in Texas, the falling dollar, the possibility that OPEC may cut production next month, the threat of new violence in Nigeria and continuing tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela.
The fact that there was no overriding reason for such a price spike could be a bad omen for consumers already bearing the burdens of high heating costs and falling real estate values. Many recent forecasts have said oil demand growth this year will be less than initially expected, yet prices continue to rise. That suggests they may continue rising as the weakening dollar attracts new investors to the futures market.
And rising oil prices mean higher gas prices.
Sloppy thinking in this headline. It’s hard to see why a “refinery outage” would cause a rise in the price of oil. Gasoline or other products yes, but not crude oil. Petroleum has to go from the ground to a refinery, then the refined products go to market. If anything, a refinery outage should cause a temporary oversupply of crude, for the other refineries which are still operating.
Just because two things happened at the same time, doesn’t mean one caused the other.
There is an old saying about killing the goose that layed the golden egg that seems apropos. A recent discovery may have significant implications:
[b]Titan has more ‘fuel’ than Earth[/b]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Titan_has_more_fuel_than_Earth/articleshow/2783961.cms
The fact that hydrocarbons on Titan are the result of geophysical processes and not biological processes implies that the same may be true on earth. [Russian scientists have asserted abiotic oil production for many years.] That means our oil reserves may not be the result of the Cambrian explosion and are therefore not limited to a layer of decayed organisms. If true, the implications are staggering on so many levels.
Actually, it’s not a recent discovery, it’s a recent confirmation of what we’ve suspected for decades: Titan is a slushy sea of relatively simple hydrocarbons like pentane and decane. But they were NOT formed within Titan’s crust. The various hydrocarbons that cover the surface of Titan are the result of photochemical processing of methane in Titan’s atmosphere. This methane was there when Titan was formed, and a lot of it is still there.
The Earth hasn’t had significant amounts of methane in the atmosphere for three or four billion years. If it was ever there, it vanished when Earthly life started producing oxygen in quantity.