October 10, 2008

Cannot resist chuckling a bit at today's newspaper reports about plunging oil prices. Oil price is falling below 80 dollars because of decreasing demand, so one paper write "demand predictions are *slashed* by 400,000 barrels a day for this year". Doing my maths, this means that "slashing" is equivalent to a reduction of less than 0.5%.
At the same time, the newspaper reports that OPEC is calling for supply reduction to keep the oil price from slipping more. If someone had said this last year when the oil price was, shriek yelp, above 50 dollars, it would have been considered ridiculous.

I am personally hoping that the oil price will stay high, just because it has made a difference here in the USA with some (beit small) changes in behavior. I'm afraid that if now the price goes below 3 dollars, still very much higher than it was a few years ago, it would be considered cheap and we'd soon be back to gas guzzler paradise.