Reply #76: DRILLING OFFSHORE WON'T CURE THE OIL SHORTAGE

[Terry in Austin]

> No locked down gas stations..no lines around the block,..no rationing..

Not yet, anyway...

Fortunately, we don't have to wait for the hole in the hull to know that there's an iceberg ahead. We have production and consumption stats, for starters.

The "speculation" meme is downright harmful, because it encourages denial about the fundamental decline of oil production worldwide. That decline wouldn't be reversed even if the entire US continental shelf went under the drill.

Any commodity trading is speculative. It's certainly adding a premium to the price, but claiming that speculation accounts for half of it is just wishful thinking. Two-digit oil prices are a part of history now. Time to start dealing with it.