How Oil Futures Traders Continue To Screw Us:

[elehhhhna]

Do they REALLY want to have 252M barrels of oil delivered to Cushing, OK in February? No, of course not. Aside from the fact that Cushing can only physically handle, if it were empty (which it is not) 40M barrels a month - we are, in fact, EXPORTING oil products out of America as our usage of oil is down 10% from last year (see chart in yesterday's post). DESPITE a 10% reduction in refiner output, which helps to create an artificial shortage by the US energy cartel so they can charge the American public much more for less - we still are at RECORD levels of oil and product storage in this country.

So why do the NYMEX traders pretend to want to buy February (front-month) oil for $100 a barrel when December 2014 barrels are trading at $91.37? Because the front-month pricing determines what US consumers pay at the pump and even if the traders take a $10 loss on 250M barrels ($2.5Bn), that is just a drop in the bucket compared to the relentless price gouging at the pumps committed by the Evil Corporations that employ those traders.

Americans consume 11Bn gallons of gasoline a month along with 5Bn gallons of distillates and 7Bn gallons of other products. Last year (when we consumed 10% more), a gallon of gas was selling for $2.98 and now it's $3.23, up .25 - that may not seem like a big deal but multiply that by 23Bn gallons and you have $5.75Bn of excess profits (and that's giving them that $2.98 is "fair" in the first place) stolen from the American people EVERY MONTH. And don't worry about the oil cartel - they aren't losing $10 a barrel at the NYMEX, maybe a dollar or two on average but worth every penny of $500M to have an excuse to charge consumers an extra $5Bn each month, right?

From The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market:
The underlying problem in the oil market and in the broader market in this country is that ordinary Americans are now seen as a resource to be exploited by those who are in power – by the wealthy and by those with political influence. We’re seeing Washington and Wall Street working so closely together that you really can’t tell the difference between them. The figureheads of each like to go back and forth between both locations, picking jobs, then switching and going back again. The government officials we are trusting and paying to look out for Americans are using those positions to get really nice, high-paying jobs in private-sector places, including Wall Street, that are effectively being used as bribes. - Leah Goodman, The Asylum


http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/twas-friday-christmas

[rdking647]

1. actually brent crude in london has more of an effect on oil prices then nymex crude.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. This is exceedingly important. They're doing this as well, to foodstuffs.

Know the game, know the enemy.

[elehhhhna]

3. ...healthcare, utilities, insurance...all the "necessities". Water's next.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Alabama Law Makes It A Felony For Undocumented Immigrants To Have Water At Their Homes

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/10/07/339067/alabama-illegal-to-live-undocumented/

At least one utility company in Alabama posted a sign informing its customers that a section of Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law prohibits them from providing water service to undocumented immigrants. According to the sign at Allgood Water Works in Blount County, Alabama, customers must have “an Alabama driver’s license or an Alabama picture ID card on file” by the date that the immigration law went into effect; otherwise, they risked losing their water service.

Sadly, the picture for Alabama’s immigrants is even grimmer than this sign suggests. Indeed, under one provision of the state’s immigration law, HB 56, it is a felony for an undocumented immigrant to even attempt to do business with Alabama’s state-run water agencies:

An alien not lawfully present in the United States shall not enter into or attempt to enter into a business transaction with the state or a political subdivision of the state and no person shall enter into a business transaction or attempt to enter into a business transaction on behalf of an alien not lawfully present in the United States. [...]

A violation of this section is a Class C felony.

[sarcasmo]

5. Wait until the election gets close

4.50 -5.00 a gallon is my prediction, especially if it looks like an Obama win.

[Ikonoklast]

6. No one that is not an end-user should be able to speculate in any commodity market. Or,

if you cannot show that you are hedging against price volatility as farmers do.

You must prove that you can take delivery of the contract.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. This is just very poorly informed nonsense

West Texas Intermediate crude oil for delivery at Cushing, OK accounts for a minute fraction of US oil production. It's not a useful benchmark; most other grades of domestic US crude have a higher per-barrel market price and exhibit the same sort of spread as that between WTI and Brent crude (which is currently trading at an $8/bbl premium over WTI). Louisiana Light Sweet ($108/bbl) and Alaska North Slope ($106/bbl) have a similar premium. NYMEX crude is an unreliable benchmark that doesn't even reflect an accurate price for most oil consumed in the US; the fact that whoever wrote this article is trying to use it as a basis for argument shows that they have no idea what they're talking about.