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The Day TAPIS hit $100 a Barrel

Posted by Phil Hart on November 7, 2007 - 4:00pm in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

I thought I would mark this occasion in TOD ANZ history:

Today, Wednesday 7th November 2007, the price of TAPIS oil produced in Malaysia and used as the Asian regional benchmark hit $100 per barrel, as published by Upstream Online:

http://www.upstreamonline.com/market_data/?id=markets_crude

Here is how the table of oil prices looked at 3:40pm Australian Eastern Summer Time (AEST):



You can also see the run in prices that has occurred over the last four weeks (this chart in Australian dollars):

http://www.aip.com.au/pricing/marketwatch.htm



Now we wait and see whether WTI reaches the same milestone this week. Will the world react or will we keep sleepwalking into our future? No doubt this would be more of an issue in Australia and New Zealand if the local currencies weren't so strong.

The Day TAPIS hit $100 a Barrel

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7 comments

Justin on November 7, 2007 - 7:12pm Permalink | Comments top

Hi All,

I was looking for some mention of this on the Brisbane news last night.
Channel 7: nothing – no surprise.
ABC: The throw to the finance report mentioned it and good old reliable Alan Kohler led his bit with the news.

I read a couple of pieces in SMH and Courier mail both with headings along the lines of “Oil reaches new heights”, but Tapis wasn’t mentioned at all!

Did anyone else catch anything in the MSM?

Cheers,
Justin in Brisi

andrew on November 7, 2007 - 8:20pm Permalink | Comments top

The real question is 'is this being ignored because election campaign coverage is more important, or is it being is being deliberately not spoken about due to not wanting to alarm people?' (or some other smiler reason - bad economic news during election time is never good news).

Also, i don't think that many people realise that the price of TAPIS (in $au) is much more important than the WTI (in $us) price that is often quoted, especially on its effect on petrol pump prices, however I suspect that WTI reaching $100 (us) will be enough of a milestone to get peoples attention.

Hoping for the best,
Andrew

--
[A farmer in India] says he now has to pump water from 300 feet below the surface, compared with 70 feet 10 years ago. (Wall Street Journal, July 28-29, 2007, p. A10)

Justin on November 7, 2007 - 11:49pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top

I agree Andrew,

I wouldn’t be surprised if the major parties don’t want this news to hit the streets as they don’t have any easy BAU answers.

Q: What is your policy regarding peak oil?
A: Don’t tell anyone.

Cheers, Justin

Kiashu on November 8, 2007 - 11:18pm Permalink | Comments top

I think really that issues like peak oil are just beyond the mainstream media, put in the "too complicated for a two-minute news report" box. After all, we're talking about the people who spend 30 seconds talking about a government policy change, 120 seconds talking about Kevin Rudd eating his earwax, and 180 seconds talking about a dog that can play the piano.

If you picture the mainstream media as a particularly dim ADHD child, then a lot of its strangeness makes sense.

Big Gav on November 9, 2007 - 7:57am Permalink | Parent | Comments top

To be fair to the MSM, I think every single outlet in Oz has done a full peak oil piece by now (lots, in the case of The Age and the ABC).

Unfortunately at this point the peak oil case isn't publically accepted as likely in the mainstream energy bureaucracies, the oil industry or by most governments around the world, so the media tend to stick to the concensus view for now.

Any one which deviated from the party line on a day to day basis would find themselves laughed at if they turned out to be wrong, so they take a conservative approach (literally, in most cases).

Thats just how it is for now, until the peak case becomes unarguable - as the saying goes, "we'll see it in the rearview mirror".

Kiashu on November 10, 2007 - 2:20am Permalink | Parent | Comments top

I don't see how the peak oil case is arguable. Even if the entire planet were made of oil, it would at some point get used up, and before it's used up, supply will fall far short of demand. The only question is when those two points point are.

Given that even with a Magic Doohickey to attach to every car engine to convert them to run on Magical Manna From The Skies, it'd take a decade or more to change them all over, and another decade or more to change over other sorts of equipment, if the point "oil running short" is less than a generation away, we need to act now.

It reminds me of what my woman says to "is the glass half-empty or half-full?"
"That depends," she says, "on whether you're drinking it or filling it up."

We're drinking it. At some point it'll be half-empty, and that's the time to, as I was once told on recruit course, to "get your shit together in a sock and wire it tight."

I don't think any of that is particularly controversial. It's not even as complex or arguable as global warming.

A few articles here or there are not really challenging the status quo. They've had more articles on whether the moon landings were faked.

Big Gav on November 10, 2007 - 5:34am Permalink | Parent | Comments top

I don't see how the peak oil case is arguable. Even if the entire planet were made of oil, it would at some point get used up, and before it's used up, supply will fall far short of demand. The only question is when those two points point are.

We're talking at cross-purposes here - in this case by "peak oil" I meant "peak oil within the next couple of years".

I think the number of people and organisations arguing for a peak more than, say, 30 years out is pretty low.

The Day TAPIS hit $100 a Barrel

PDF version

7 comments