Oil nudging $60
What punishment would oil consumers suffer if Bush proceeds with an attack on Iran?
Goldman Sachs thinks a new oil “superspike”, perhaps to $105 per barrel is potentially beginning. They cite “fundamentals and geopolitical turmoil” as driving forces behind oil prices, but they also think we can drill our way out of permanent oil crisis.
According to Bloomberg late Sunday East Coast time,
Crude oil futures in New York rose to a record on speculation an increase in output quotas being considered by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries won’t be enough to meet rising demand…Crude oil for May delivery rose as much as 52 cents to $57.79 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, beating an April 1 intra-day record of $57.70 a barrel. Oil traded at $57.70 a barrel at 9:13 a.m. Singapore time.
A recent talk by Seymour Hersh is quoted in a Buzzflash piece:
when the price of oil reaches $68-$69 a barrel, this will be the crunch point in terms of real economic decline. If Bush wants to move against Iran, which is pumping about 3.9 [million] barrels a day, he’s heading for trouble. According to Hersh, Iran will scuttle every ship in the Straights of Hormuz and the Malaca Straits in Indonesia. It will take months of dredging and salvaging to approach normalcy.
You go, Bush, go get those Iranian nuke plants. Show ‘em who’s boss.
April 8th, 2005 at 13:33
What punishment would oil consumers suffer if Bush proceeds with an attack on Iran?
Just a note on semantics here, Eric. Shouldn’t your sentence read “when” not “if”?
I am no expert in oil or policy but I can read a map and there is one area that seems pretty resistant to “american democratic” influence and that area is named Iran. With a government that is so good at conspiracy theories and a diving approval rating I suggest humbly that when may be sooner than we think.
April 8th, 2005 at 14:27
Yep, Dana, if we can believe Scott Ritter, then “when” is certainly more appropriate than “if”. But the crazies in the veeps office and the Pentagon are hard to predict. They must know how serious the consequences would be, and there is no way they could succeed in attacking, conquering, and holding Iran given the great cost doing so in Iraq.