Oil Prices Drop Below $60 For First Time In More Than 5 Years
Source: Associated Press
The price of oil fell below $60 for the first time since July 2009 on Thursday and ended trading in New York at $59.95.
Benchmark U.S. crude oil dropped 99 cents, or 1.6 percent. Oil has fallen steadily for nearly six months, and is down 44 percent since reaching a high for the year of $107.26 in late June.
"We don't see a price bottom," wrote energy analyst Jim Ritterbusch in a note to investors. He expects oil to fall further, toward $55 a barrel, in the short term.
The drop is a result of rising global oil production, especially in the U.S., at a time when demand has weakened because of slowing economies in Asia and Europe.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/11/oil-prices-below-60_n_6311644.html
$60 and up is the number talked about to maintain the current fracking crusade. Shall be interesting to watch the industries reaction to under $60 prices.
BP has already announced layoffs as I posted a day or so ago.
The talk now is the bottom to be around $40.
Selfishly speaking, I have a 1200 gallon heating oil tank that I would love to pump another 800 gallons in if the price is right.
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SoapBox
(18,791 posts)My, my...how price gouging can raise prices so quickly. I never would have noticed those skyrocketing gas prices.
Oh...YES I did notice. I've no sympathy for OPECers, frackers or oil executives.
Lugano
(52 posts)to a bottom of maybe $30 (give or take a dollar or two)...
Then Keystone will be just a bad idea and use their existing pipes....
then TPP would be in danger of being yet another bad idea by the lobbyists while we do this:
JimDandy
(7,318 posts)when prices were just below $60/barrel.
Anybody seeing that price at their neighborhood gas station currently? Where I am, it's $2.89/gal. Are we being price gouged?
JDDavis
(725 posts)A large part of the increase in price per gallon was due to the influx of speculators.
Although some reduction in the amount of speculation has come about here in the US commodities markets, speculators still are in high numbers worldwide.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)comparison but you just did it for me.
Our current mid-michigan price (jackson) is around 2.45.
PumpkinAle
(1,210 posts)and we can't do anything about it.
When oil went back to $100 a barrel I kept asking why are we still paying over the top prices - no one could answer that. I paid $2.77 tonight, but you are right we should be paying a whole lot less.
christx30
(6,241 posts)Shell of my Heart near my house. I see it dropping every 2 or 3 days.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)You're thinking of the December 2008 price.
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPM0_PTE_NUS_DPG&f=M
Mad-in-Mo
(229 posts)n/t
NickB79
(19,233 posts)So, it's getting down there.
quadrature
(2,049 posts)is that a worldwide recession causes
China's economy to fall apart.
I think that would be
a blessing to the world.
JDDavis
(725 posts)China, remember, owns a huge percentage of U.S. debt.
China's use of oil and gas is much less per capita than America's use of oil and gas per capita.
China has massive coal reserves which she is trying to sensibly regulate and reduce.
China is getting richer only because she has hundreds of millions of workers who are very poor.
China's export market in many product lines continues to grow. Consumers worldwide buy what China makes.
quadrature
(2,049 posts)China sells, but does not buy.
(except for raw material such as copper,
which causes its own set of
(commodity-price-spikes) worldwide problems)
.........................
Chinese-economy cannot function
without (what I call) one way loans,
loans from 'non-bank banks', that will never
be repaid. these NBBs get money from the party,
which gets its money by **selling land.
**this is communism, everybody owns everything
nobody own anything, or something like that,
Selling land means
'what exactly'?, nobody knows. no land title, no anything.
the whole Chinese system is rotten.
My opinion, is that the world
could absorb the USTreasuries that China holds
and would have to sell,
pampango
(24,692 posts)imports - $1.3 trillion. And Germany's population is 1/17 that of China.
Sounds like we should be hoping that Germany's economy falls apart as well. Economic hardship in Germany be a problem for its neighbors, can it?
NickB79
(19,233 posts)And now that we're out of a recession, global emissions are skyrocketing again, despite all the hope about building out more renewables.
Per capita emissions don't matter; only the absolute numbers do. Mother Nature doesn't care if China releases less CO2 per person that other countries, because the end result is still a massive CO2 release. And "sensibly" using their coal? Are you sure?
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140213/chinas-plan-clean-air-cities-will-doom-climate-scientists-say
Climate change trumps every other issue we face as a species today, seeing as we've already instigated a mass extinction event through our emissions.
roamer65
(36,745 posts)The Chinese will employ their people through conquest, rather than commerce.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Or we could hope for another "Mao" so that China would again disappear from the world economy - no exports, no imports, a lot of poverty and starvation. But, hey, that would be good for "us".
NickB79
(19,233 posts)Either way, we're facing the prospect of billions in poverty or dead by the end of the century.
pampango
(24,692 posts)should 1+ billion Chinese pay the price when 200+ million Americans would achieve the same effect?
Obviously we need to work on solutions that do not doom most humans to abject poverty (and allow a small number to maintain a nice, high-polluting lifestyle) in order to save the planet.
NickB79
(19,233 posts)All it cares about is the absolute number of tons of CO2 and methane we add to the atmosphere annually. In the end, we're ALL going to have to pay a heavy price. Most likely, the American standard of living will have to fall, and millions (billions?) of people around the world hoping to be lifted from poverty will see themselves staying there. We're talking about a global mass extinction event in the works; what makes you think anything about what could possibly be the largest planetary die-off since the dinosaurs will be fair?
That's nice. It's been the standard line for the past 30+ years since we started discussing climate change seriously. And it's failed absolutely. Every attempt that has been made to find a solution that combines a high standard of living and an actual reduction in climate-altering gases has failed, as evident by the fact we're now at the highest PPM of CO2 in 3 million years and the Arctic ice cap is in a death spiral, despite large increases in the number of renewable and green tech introduced. Ultimately, the problem boils down to the fact we've exceeded this carrying capacity of the planet by several billion humans, yet we are loath to bring up this uncomfortable point in honest discussion. In all actuality, we have probably run out of time to keep working on any viable solutions to prevent catastrophic warming while maintaining an ever-growing, ever-consuming global society, given how much warming is already "baked into the cake", so to speak, and the threat that positive feedback loops pose as temperatures continue to rise.
Ultimately, the problem boils down to the fact we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet by several billion humans, and insist on adding billions more, yet we are loath to bring up this uncomfortable point in honest discussion.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)JDDavis
(725 posts)What are you willing to pay to clean up the pollution burning that fuel creates?
Is that the real price of burning the fuel? Or do future generations pay another $1000 for cleaning up the pollution from that fuel in that barrel?
Making fossil fuels cheaper only makes them more readily available and more quickly consumed.
The only possible way to reduce carbon emissions worldwide is to develop carbon neutral or passive solar and geothermal sources of energy/power. We are only just beginning down that long road and have developed few marginal and minimally effective technologies that do that, just as we once used candles and wood and whale oil to light and heat our domiciles and workplaces, we then began 150 years of developing the most polluting technologies of burning fossil fuel in order to suit our lighting, heating, cooling and transportation needs.
175 years from the horse drawn carriage on a country road to the jet plane airports and automobile superhighways, from the whale oil lamp and fireplace to the light emitting diode light bulb and microwave oven, from the water-powered gristmills and factory looms to the steel and aluminum refineries, fossil fuel-derived chemical fertilizers and water-polluting, toxic chemical-producing microchip and other manufacturing processes all in the last 175 years. We knit very few lamb's wool or cotton sweaters, some factory somewhere mass-produces sweaters from oil byproduct derived Orlon, Rayon, and cotton blends, on an electric powered loom, electricity derived almost entirely from coal, oil or natural gas.
All of these "modern" technologies for energy production and manufacturing and transportation are pollution producing on the most gigantic of scales. No wonder our glaciers are melting so fast, our Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is disappearing.
There is no easy way to turn this giant trajectory around, and no sufficiently developed non-polluting technology presently available to do the whole job, at any cost. That doesn't mean we are doomed, only that we are continuing to take baby steps in what should be a worldwide expedition into a new realm of technological breakthroughs and direction-reversing solutions. No one passive solar, geothermal, or other technology can solve the entire problem, we need more solutions, more research more observation and a more unified worldwide commitment to accomplishing a goal probably a century or more away.
By then, yes, the planet will face seemingly unfathomable challenges and changes in land use, and even land footprint, more land and ice still falling into the seas every year. California may be mostly desert, Miami and Key West may be a few more feet underwater, New Orleans and other coastal cities in the world a past memory like a fabled lost city of Atlantis, (or other actual, once-existent Mediterranean island cities, which probably were victims of volcanoes like Pompeii).
But the search and the effort to find a way to power our complex world of 7+ + billions must continue. The first step of which is getting rid of the massive corporate-sponsored influence of climate change denialists, and the willingness to work WITH China and other huge populations toward a common worldwide variety of sensible, economically feasible solutions.
Windmills and solar panels and hybrid cars are baby steps in the right direction, but, of course, no one sees those as anything more than baby steps along the way, worthwhile, yes, but no final answer.
In a way, I'm glad that within 25-50 years from now I won't be around to see how bad it gets before it begins to get any better.
