Oil spikes $25 a barrel on anxiety over US bailout (AP)

[chill_wind]

Oil spikes $25 a barrel on anxiety over US bailout {/b]

13 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Oil prices spiked more than $25 a barrel Monday — the biggest one-day price jump ever — as anxiety over the government's $700 billion bailout plan, a weak dollar and an expiring crude contract ignited a dramatic rally.


"When people sense that someone is short, it's like blood on the streets. It just accelerates the rally," Flynn said.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080922/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices

[curious one]

1. Can this get any worse?

[JohnyCanuck]

2. Yup

Here comes $500 oil
If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion - and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He's just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

By Brian O'Keefe, senior editor

(Fortune Magazine) -- Matt Simmons is as perplexed as anyone that it has fallen to him to take on OPEC, Exxon, the Saudis, and all the other misguided defenders of conventional wisdom in the oil patch. Why should one investment banker with a penchant for research be required to point out what he regards as the obvious - that from here on out, oil supplies can't meet demand, and if we don't act soon to solve this crisis, World War III could be looming?

Why should a man who scorns most environmentalists have to argue that locally grown produce and wind power are the way of the future? Why should a lifelong Republican need to be the one to point out that his party's new mantra - "Drill, baby, drill!" - won't really fix anything and that his party's presidential candidate is clueless about energy? That the spike in oil prices earlier this year wasn't a temporary market anomaly and the recent retreat in prices is just a misleading calm before a calamitous storm? That we're headed toward $500-a-barrel oil?

SNIP

Since then he has moved to the forefront of the peak-oil movement - a once fringe but now growing contingent of oil industry veterans, independent consultants, investors, and academics who believe that world oil production is at or near an inflection point, after which it will fall inexorably and fail to meet projected future demands. According to Simmons, we have already passed that peak. And while we're not going to run out of it anytime soon, the era of easy oil is over, and the world is about to enter a period of convulsive change. (Hint: Learn to garden, and buy some comfortable walking shoes.)

The soaring price of crude - it has risen from below $20 a barrel in 2002 to as high as $147 earlier this year - has helped thrust Simmons further into the spotlight. He was one of the main voices, for instance, in the recent oil-shock documentary "Crude Awakening," and his book has now sold more than 100,000 copies. His willingness to make bold predictions about how high crude may go has made him an A-list guest for cable TV news programs and a go-to source for newspaper reporters covering oil and gas. In 2005, when oil was $58 a barrel, he predicted it would be at or above $100 within a few years. Now he sees it climbing to $200, $300, or higher. "There really is no roof on oil prices at this point," he says.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/economy/500dollaroil_okeefe.fortune/index.htm

[Jack_Dawson]

3. Learn a Trade

I'm going to make horseshoes.

[spanone]

4. holy shit....we need to run these fuckers out of office N O W

[chill_wind]

5. .