The results to last fortnight's Fun Online Poll are as follows:
Is Saudi Arabia deliberately pushing down the price of crude oil?
Definitely - 31%
Probably - 35%
Possibly - 16%
Unlikely - 13%
Other, please specify - 5%
Which is clear enough.
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Here's a chart from Wiki of the inflation-adjusted i.e. real oil price since 1861.
As we can see, the normal price for a barrel appears to be $20 (last seen in 1999!), which is the bare minimum actual cost of extracting it enough of it, everything above that is manipulation/volatility.
I explained why the price of oil is so easy to manipulate and/or so volatile here: basically, both supply and demand are insensitive to changes in price. For whatever reasons, whoever has been manipulating up the price of oil for the last 15 years has decided to allow it to fall a bit, so far it has fallen from $110 to $70 in only four months…
So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "How low will the price of a barrel of oil fall over the next year?"
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar. I voted $40.
Debate Magazine
