Let's see

• 86 million barels/day = demand

• 84 million barrels/day = supply

My calculator says price will rise until price = demand.

So now we can cut back on consumption, but any surplus created by our austerity is easily gobbled up in eveloping countries.

Nope they ain't experts.

You are spot on in your assessment of hiding the "experts".  I also would add that none of these news organizations know what a "speculator" does or ever say who they are.  I have yet to hear that explained on air.  Supply and demand work hand in hand with the role of these "speculators" whose jobs are to reduce risk.  This also makes it curious to hear the left automatically state that drilling in the US would have no immediate impact.  I do know it would have an immediate impact on any "speculator" who is doing their job.

It just doesn't make sense to me.  If I were buying oil futures, speculating on what the prices will be in the future, I would look for the cheapest oil, not the most expensive.  So, wouldn't it rather be that speculation should drive DOWN the price, not up?  (I'm confused.)

Sadly there is no buffer.  The way that the refiners operate is to price their products on a prospective basis, meaning what the price of future oil will cost, not current.  This is why the spot market price for gasoline goes up as soon as there's an increase in the price of oil, even though the oil that's being processed was bought at a lower price.

If something happens that drives oil to $150, $160, etc., the refiners will boost the price accordingly even though they won't see that oil for another six months or so and all the oil being refined was bought at a much lower price.

Ok, I'm defending the speculators and I don't represent them.

http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/07/05/another-liberal-myth-%e2%80%93-the-us-has-no-energy-policy/

There is a lot of blameshifting going on.  The Dems don't want to take responsibility for 30 years of incompetence that led to this result.  Oil supplies are tight because of combination of Dem incompetence and growing world demand for oil and gas. Speculators only REACT to the conditions present, they don't create them.  Shooting the messenger does not solve the problem.

The price of any product IS NOT PROPORTIONAL to it's supply, price is a function of competition either by the supplier or the consumer.  In a tight supply market or shortage, the price rises EXPONENTIALLY to limit demand and encourage the creation of more supply.

Southwest Airlines is a good example of what prudent buying in the futures market can do for a consumer, it takes a speculator at the other end of the deal to accomplish this task.  Without the speculator it would be very difficult to determine the true value of oil.  The price of any product or service is determined by the value a customer assigns it.  When there are more customers than supply, the customers compete against each other to bid up the price.  The most fundamental mistake a person can make is to think that the price of any product is just the cost plus profit margin.  The price is solely determined by the consumer's demand in relation to supply.  You over price something, the customer stops demanding or finds an alternative.

What really happened here was the Dems and their environmentalist fanatics wanted to pursue their panacea of an oil free economy, since alternative energy is way more expensive than oil, they had to raise the price of oil by constricting supply.  Libs aren't stupid, they knew very well what they were doing by putting drilling here off limits.  This is why libs want the price of gasoline to match Europe ($9/gallon), but like Obama said they wanted it more gradually and preferred that rise to be taxes putting money in the treasury.  This is why they are having heartburn with the oil companies, the money didn't magically go to the treasury.

 Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.  

“Expressed as a percentage (as it always is), the increases in India and China sound significant, but when you look at the actual numbers they are a drop in the bucket of global supply.”

Bruzilla, using you own data:

If “increases in demand in India and China, which are increasing at about 5% and 7% per year”, were averaged, let’s say that it is 6%. And their present consumption is 8 million barrels a day (“Indian demand is all of about 2 million barrels a day …and the Chinese are at about 6 million a day”) .

6% of 8 million barrels a day = .48 million barrels a day /year increase due to India and China.

1% of 23 million barrels a day = .23 million barrels a day /year increase due to US.

Everybody understands that [presently] the US consumes more oil than China and India put together. However, using the data that you provide, it is clear that China and India are driving the increase in demand at twice that rate of the US. (BTW, I have heard – I am not quoting facts that I can reference – that recently US consumption has decreased). To the extent that increase in demand is an important factor in the present market situation, the effect that India and China are having on the market is a lot more than “a drop in the bucket” not only as a percentage but also as an absolute amount.

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.

And though I'm right in there with O'Reilly on most issues, he's definitel pandering left on this one.

• LYDSEXICS UNTIE