Perhaps I'm just being a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but the price of a barrel of oil and in turn home heating oil/petrol/diesel etc has baffled me recently.
When it was sky rocketing up around $150 a barrel, we were told it was going to reach $200 without any doubt.
Yet it stopped and has now, in a few short months, dropped dramatically to less than $50 a barrel.
How can this happen? I heard on the radio today that its due to the credit crunch and the fact that there's not the same demand for oil. Surely this is nonsense. I am using the same amount that I always did at home and in my car. In fact the weather is getting colder so we are all using more heating oil. And surely we will all be buying oil for the winter? I have asked a few work colleagues and they are the same. None are saying that they are driving any less or switching off their heating. And I am sure that worldwide, although there may be some reduction, by the laws of simple economics and supply & demand, its not anywhere near enough to account for a barrel to drop to a third of its price in 8 weeks.
Some will say it was oil speculators selling their stock to the world market, but again I'm not buying that.
I think that for a while the worlds Gov's and OPEC were happy to fleece us and take the massive profits and taxes, but now that the world is in near-collapse they have got together and said, "lets knock the prices down or the masses will get angry".
Thoughts?
When it was sky rocketing up around $150 a barrel, we were told it was going to reach $200 without any doubt.
Yet it stopped and has now, in a few short months, dropped dramatically to less than $50 a barrel.
How can this happen? I heard on the radio today that its due to the credit crunch and the fact that there's not the same demand for oil. Surely this is nonsense. I am using the same amount that I always did at home and in my car. In fact the weather is getting colder so we are all using more heating oil. And surely we will all be buying oil for the winter? I have asked a few work colleagues and they are the same. None are saying that they are driving any less or switching off their heating. And I am sure that worldwide, although there may be some reduction, by the laws of simple economics and supply & demand, its not anywhere near enough to account for a barrel to drop to a third of its price in 8 weeks.
Some will say it was oil speculators selling their stock to the world market, but again I'm not buying that.
I think that for a while the worlds Gov's and OPEC were happy to fleece us and take the massive profits and taxes, but now that the world is in near-collapse they have got together and said, "lets knock the prices down or the masses will get angry".
Thoughts?