PG - I mistakenly put this post in moving ideas thread but meant to put it here.
If it's not too much trouble, delete it over there, OK. If that's a pain, nevermind.

Well, $65/barrel today. I think we'll see a sawtooth pattern in oil prices with an upward trend in the indefinite future. As Simmons pointed out, we have a little "breathing room" between Labor Day and Thanksgiving to do something ???? before the winter demand surge is upon us. I grow increasingly confident that we will be in the $70 to $80 range by year's end but it could also be worse. This is very worrisome especailly in light of the first signs in some areas that the housing bubble is starting to burst. These two events together -- energy and housing -- can easily bring on the feared recessionary downturn. Afterall, 4 of the last 6 recessions in the last 50 years were preceded by spikes in oil prices.

I'm worried now.... things are happening fast.

What I find amazing, in his most recent interview Matt Simmons was saying that by winter the price of oil could go up by 5-10 times because of only a small supply disruption. And in the same interview he said that OPEC could be producing anywhere between 28-30 million bbls/day. When the supply situation is so critical, how can 2 million bbls/day not be accounted for? It really does show the need for independent accounting of oil production.

Well you could start with the situation in Iraq, where it is hard to tell from one day to the next what a pipeline will be delivering. Then you add to this the problems of major depletion in some of the fields in Saudi Arabia, and it becomes a little easier to see. I think J has some comments on this so I am going to go and let him post to it.

Er! Actually it will be as soon as blogger goes back up - be patient!

A Scene from the pump.

Was filling up next to a young mother with her suburban. She was rattling off a long list of errands she had to run (mostly shuttling the kids hither and yon) and then ended her conversation with, "and I just spent $75.00 filling up my car."

How much higher does that tank of gas have to cost before she and the kids just stay home?

Another random thought...

A late summer economic crisis...

A president taking an unprecidented 5-week vacation in the first year of his current term...

A Vice President blowing smoke about attacking an oil rich country in the Persian Gulf...

Sound familiar?

Tedman - Must be some historical reference. The economic crisis you are hoping for doesn't look likely to deliver.

Tedman: and remember, supposedly, Cheney has given orders to plan for massive airstrikes against Iran should the US be the victim of another terrorist attack--whether Iran is linked or not.

Anonymous, did you mean 'historical' or 'hysterical'? You seem to be sceptical of the prospects for a 'late summer economic crisis', but I think that Tedman is onto something. The housing balloon is beginning to shrivel (San Diego real estate is exhibit A), the stock market is in pre-breakdown mode (wide ranging intra-day and inter-day moves), energy prices show all the signs of bursting higher, the Iraq debacle continues to worsen, Bush is asleep at the wheel, China has slowed the pace of buying U.S. debt, interest rates continue to rise, public support for the current administration is nowhere , retail sales are weakening, etc. etc. The big kahunas among these are the rising energy prices and the developing real estate and stock market collapses. But of course, the average joe doesn't stand a chance to gets his house in order because our man George and his minions say 'the economy is strong'. Listen to Tedman, folks, he's right.

Are you all trying to link the concepts of peak oil and conspiracy theories? Why should someone believe what you say about peak oil if you will throw around a wild story like this based on a "supposedly". If I were Exxon, I would probably sneak into peak oil websites and write crazy posts like a lot of the ones I see here, just to make peak oilers look like loonies. Actually YS's isn't that bad, but is a good example of the genre: off topic and without evidence.

Anonymous said: 'off topic and without evidence'. Here's the evidence my friend:

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/CO/W

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/UG/A5

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/NG/W

Give your head a shake.

1) Which chart shows that Dick Cheney has give orders to bomb Iran? That is what I was referring to. That comment is "off topic and without evidence"

2) The charts are very nice. They are on topic. They are clear documentation of the rise of oil and gasoline prices, but we are all well aware of that. No one denies that oil and gasoline prices have risens steeply. I think thye will continue to.

However the summer recession prediction is just a guess. You may be right, but there are not that many days left. Indicators are mixed. American people and the financial markets are more optimistic than ever. The American ecomonty is cruising along. i agree that over time the housing market is going to lose value and we need to deal with the current account deficit. I don't think energy prices are going to impact the economy much until they go up a bit more, which they will do.

It's not impossible that the economy is about to crash. However, you were all saying that three months ago. I amsure you will be sayng t again in three months. It must be nice to be able to erase the slate.

Now, any evidence of the Cheney comment?

Re: Iran

Would you guys get off even discussing the bombing of Iran thing and conspiracy stuff????

THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, OK?

In a fifteen round fight between the heavy weight "Uncle Sam" and the light-heavy weight and underdog Iraq, the clear winner by unanimous decision has been .... Iran!

They didn't even have to participate, they had ring-side seats! And now they are about to reap the profits, thumbing their nose at the Europeans and UN and US over uranium enrichment, making energy deals with India, Chiina and -- oh my! -- Iraq.

The American Emperor has no clothes, get it? And Iran knows this.

"Now, any evidence of the Cheney comment?"

Nobody said anything about "Cheney's comment". But check this out: http://amconmag.com/2005_08_01/article3.html

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States."

"As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States."

I personally agree that it would be totally crazy to attack Iran but knowing your current administration... Not impossible. The Euro oil bourse thing is a threat and they supposedly must keep all options open.

Anonymous -

IMO, when financial people are starting to take government meddling in ALL markets as fact, beginning to realize that Peak Oil people are NOT insane...

http://www.safehaven.com/article-3590.htm

http://www.safehaven.com/article-3591.htm

...then I feel that making extrapolations that the economy will tank is a fairly safe one. When? Well...

http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/08070000aaa02f00...

...I think there are those with money that believe relatively soon!

Spooky: The first two links are from people selling gold. Gold promoters always say the economy is about to tank because they can push gold as a "safe haven". Believing gold pushers on the economy is as stupid as believing oiol pushers on oil supplies.

The final article is fairly trivial, and probably for domestic consumption. If they were pulling official reserves thay could just pull them without the fanfare.

You know what, Anonymous? We could all poo-poo each and every item you decide to list the same way, but the intent here is to gather data and arrive at consensus and maybe even some solutions. I respect your opinion, but I find you inherently hard-headed to ignore obvious corollaries and trends in preference for "facts".

Everything stated and used for discussion is OPINION, not irrefutable fact. Even the laws of science were developed and overturned, revamped and rewritten over centuries, but that did not stop people from speculating and observing and trying to divine what the truth was.

I could just as easily point out that believing whatever you read from the government is stupid because they have a vested interest in disinformation, or that any corporate source is circumspect because they each have their own agendas to inflate stock prices. In short, every source must be taken circumspectly, as each has an agenda. Your position is, without a doubt, the most easily defensible and cowardly on this blog today.

If you are waiting for all the facts, you will always be a day late and a dollar short. You should try driving the freeway just using your rearview mirror - you will always know with certainty where you have been..

You're a little touchy there Spooky. I think I must have hit on something.

Look: If I quoted Exxon on oil prices people would jump on it and say Exxon is biased. They would be right.

Likewise someone selling gold is biased. In many cases worse, because they always have to have the same pitch. The economiy has gone up and down for years. Why don't you find one single reference on safehaven.com to why things might turn out OK and you don't need a safe haven? Go back ten years, 20.

You can say I am cowardly for shedding light on your sources. But the fact is I do think that safehaven is promoting a scam. They want you to believe that everything is going to hell so that you buy their product. Yes or no?

So there are the facts as I see them. I doubt you will usef facts to refute tehm because you can not. www.safehaven.com makes money by telling people things are going downhill and selling them gold.

I think people who are trying to pry savings out of others by selling them a dark vision that nvere changes are scams. They are parasites preying on peak oil websites to get rich.

You can call me hardheaded or a coward. But I would prefer you to prove me wrong. If you do, I'lll admit it.

My point was that EVERYBODY has an agenda, so we are in agreement on that?

But the other point was that the only way to even try to determine what to expect is to sift through all of these sources, which I think this blog does a good job of.

I just cannot understand how anyone would just poo-poo something out of hand - that is part of what got us into this fragging mess.

If somebody takes the time to actually write something, then there is generally a nugget or two of truth in it (or cited by it), and probably a viewpoint that may illuminate something you have recently read. Maybe reading it will connect two dots in your mental picture that were previously floating unconnected.

Part of the reason that I used one of those links was that the safehaven guys have latched onto peak oil, in a big way. That has not been the case before in most of the goldbugs pitches.

I think that if the Saudis are publicly saying they are repatriating funds, they have been doing it for some time or are nearly finished...wouldn't that fit with the view you hit back with? And they have to do something to quiet things down over there as well.

What got my back up was the dismissive and supercilious tone - maybe I am too fragging sensitive, but I have known about this for 40 years, and been told I was worrying about nothing for a very, very long time. My reading lots of "agendized" articles and "nut-case" predictions led me to where I am. Kunstler and I have been emailing for years, so this isn't exactly my first date with an oil crisis. Maybe seeing you simply brush them off verbally as inconsequential and unimportant was too much - I'm old and cranky.

So if you want to debate, I'm not the guy. I already know what is coming, having watched men take the easy path for far too many decades. Human nature is what we should be discussing - because that is what will be on trial soon.