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Oil still rising after Saudi summit
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal speaks at an emergency oil summit in Jeddah, June 22, 2008
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Scott Jagow: No one seems to be listening to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis declared the price of oil unjustified and unreasonable. Oil climbed even further.
The Saudis said they would pump more oil. The price went up again. And yesterday, Saudi Arabia held an emergency oil summit in the city of Jeddah. Again, they vowed to produced more oil. So take a guess what happened? The price of oil climbed to $137 a barrel this morning. Stephen Beard has more from London.
Stephen Beard: Pretty soon, the Saudis will be pumping at their highest level for 30 years. But no other OPEC members in Jeddah followed the Saudi example.
Rob Laughlin of MF Global says that's why the price of oil is higher this morning:
Rob Laughlin: Reason we're up is obviously the failure of the meeting in Jeddah yesterday. Certainly the market's perception is that we've failed, because we haven't really got any substantial extra supplies of oil hitting the world market.
In fact, the Saudi increase is likely to be outweighed by the loss of production in Nigeria. Some major oil fields there remain shut following attacks last week by militants. Nigeria is now pumping crude at its lowest level for a quarter of a century.
In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.
Drill in the Gulf? Go ahead! But, don't cry when a spill cripples Florida’s tourism economy. Speculation? Yes. But let's also face facts:
The world's population will reach 7 billion in 2012. The United States now ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India (according to the Census Bureau). Only 8 in 1,000 people in India own a passenger car and vehicle sales are expected to rise by almost 50 percent over the next three years. In China, the current rate is 1 car per 20 people. Every day, about 17,000 private vehicles are being registered in China. In Japan and the United States, it's at least 450 cars per 1,000 people. You can’t drill your way out of this reality!
We’ve been the big fish in the pond for a long time. Now, we have increased competition for oil. Opening up additional areas to oil companies that currently drill on <20 percent of offshore, and <30 percent of onshore acres CURRENTLY HELD doesn’t make sense. For short-term relief, why not tap these 68 million UNUSED acres NOW, instead of waiting 20 years for the oil in the Gulf? Doing so would produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day. This is nearly double the current domestic oil production.
Here’s another novel idea that probably wasn’t mentioned in your GOP marching orders: Reduce your consumption! Carpooling every other day reduced my gas cost by 50%.
Speculation-speculation-speculation. There is no oil shortage or reasoning for the drastic increases in the price of crude. People are strugling to pay bills and eat for god sakes, DRILL IN THE GULF!!!!!! The chinese are going to do it regardless of our spineless congress. DEMS MUST GO!!!!!! I am sick of all my investments losing due to this fabricated BS regarding oil prices.....
