Oil drops below $95 a barrel as dollar rises

[DonViejo]

Source: AP/Salon

The price of oil dropped below $95 a barrel on Friday as a strengthening dollar made crude more expensive for traders using other currencies.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for June delivery was down $1.74 to $94.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contact lost 23 cents to finish at $96.39 a barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

Since oil is traded in dollars, a stronger dollar makes crude and other commodities less appealing to investors with other currencies.

On Friday, the euro was down to $1.2998 from $1.3041 late Thursday in New York. The dollar also gained on the Japanese yen and was trading at 101.34 yen on Friday, the first time it broke above 100 yen in over four years, since April 2009.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/10/oil_drops_below_95_a_barrel_as_dollar_rises/

[mikeysnot]

1. And yet we are still paying

4.29 a gallon in Chicago for 89 octane.... fuck the oilgarchs

[trumad]

6. Sheesh

I'm paying 3.15 in Orlando

[bulloney]

7. Not only that, but domestic production is at a 20 to 30 year high.

Yeah, I know--global market--yada, yada, yada.

But, I'm hearing and reading that the Dakotas are producing as much oil as Saudi Arabia. With that much more product on the market, shouldn't it have a depressing effect on prices instead of this $90-$100/barrel stuff we've consistently seen in the past couple of years?

[Aviation Pro]

8. Try Portugal....

...$9.30 a gallon.

[mikeysnot]

15. they don't drill domestically llike we do.

The prices are high because speculators get to place bets on wall street to raise up prices..

Before Bush, this was not possible, only those in the oil trade were able to participate in the process.

Not sure what bill it was will check.

m

[xtraxritical]

13. In So. Cal. gas is down from about 4.29 to around 3.89, it's been years.

[Posteritatis]

19. $4.72 this week in Nova Scotia. (nt)

[tridim]

2. Of course, that must be why gas prices are RISING at the pump!

Again, and again, and again. It never stops.

[liberal N proud]

3. gas prices are rising at the pump because a major holiday is approaching

And I have a trip planned Never fails, when I am traveling, the prices jump.

They will give us some crock about changing seasons of refineries are down for maintenance or some other bullshit story to cover the fact that they jack the prices when travelers are most likely to hit the road.

[bigdarryl]

4. Oil dropping and gas has gone up here in NJ tomorrow Saturday they will be higher

Because the pattern here is Friday's is when gas goes up

[fredamae]

5. Perhaps we all ought to simply

"Put it in park". I remember in the '50's there was a "Gas War"---I don't remember why it started--I think it was because of corp trying to sell the Cheapest gas to get More business.
But gas got down to 4 cents a gal AND you got a glass, or a can of soup, or jello or dishes etc as an incentive to shop with a particular bus.

If people stopped buying it or severely curtailed........
We won't tho, times have changed....

[mac56]

10. Times definitely have changed.

My dad ran the gas station in our small Minnesota town in the 60s. I remember those giveaways.

Gas wars are a thing of the past. Vendors agree with each other on what the lowest allowable price per gallon should be. Station owners who go rogue on this don't stay in business for long. Collusion much?

[Dash87]

9. Obama ruined teh economy!!1!

- Rising dollar
- Stock market booming
- home sales growing
- more consumer confidence and spending

It's awful!

[BumRushDaShow]

11. Meanwhile I just paid $3.69/gal yesterday

[Javaman]

14. Went up 15 cents over night here in my part of Austin. nt

[Sunlei]

12. such easy oil, the best light green crude gushes out of the wells in africa and russia...

we don't even need to place the crappier quality thick north american crude and shale toxic sludge on the global market but for the oil corps wanting the billions of free Gov welfare money.

Local crude should be all used for domestic gasoline and the price cut in half. And no more billions in Americans Federal funds for Corporate welfare.

[NickB79]

16. Your idea would require billions more in corp. oil welfare

Local crude should be all used for domestic gasoline and the price cut in half. And no more billions in Americans Federal funds for Corporate welfare.

The cost to pull oil out of the oil fields like those in N. Dakota or Texas is generally around $60/barrel and up. Cut the price below this, and the oil producers will simply pull up stakes and cap the wells, since they'd be losing money on every barrel pumped.

So, the only way we could use local crude for domestic gas while cutting the price in half is to give MORE welfare to the oil companies, not less. We'd have to subsidize them to pump the oil.

That's the catch: most of the easy oil is gone, pumped and burned years ago. The reason the price stays so stubbornly high is because we're adding more and more of the expensive stuff, like tar sands and shale oil, to offset the decline in the easy oil reserves.

[Sunlei]

17. so if the producers are only working for the free gov money maybe they should stop.

America would save billions and we can buy our crude from Africa and russia.

[NickB79]

18. Africa and Russia can't meet demand alone

To repeat: the cheap, easy oil is largely gone. The massive fields in the ME, Russia and Africa have been pumped for decades, and are all either in decline, or are projected to reach decline in the next decade. New technologies could improve recovery rates for a time, but that would also make the oil much more expensive (just as we're seeing in North Dakota). And the prospects of finding large new reserves of easy oil are pretty bleak right now, hence the rush to explore hard reserve areas such as the Arctic ocean or the deep Gulf of Mexico strikes.

And on top of this, demand from the developing nations is exploding. China just added 21 million cars to their roads in the past year, for example.

There is really no easy way out of this hole we've gotten ourselves into, being so dependent upon a fuel that is rapidly killing the planet.