Originally Posted by
Columbia
But the rest of the world is demanding more and more oil as the population continues to grow. Combine that with the fact that there is no new oil being discovered or drilled for (certainly not in the US) and you have a true supply/demand imbalance (versus simple speculation). Also throw in perpetual ME unrest.
There was a section in the last MEC meeting minutes on oil trading, in early 2011 1.5 BILLION barrels of oil were trading daily. Only 88 MILLION of those were physical trades, the rest were paper trades - presumably due to speculation. I wonder where the price would be if the speculation was all but terminated.