I stumbled across a web site that talks to Peak Oil.
I found this particular post interesting. It talks about supply and demand and suggests we are in for a number of ups and down in the price of crude oil and thus of gasoline.
There is a chart in the comments, just a couple down, talking about the price of whale bone and whale bone "production." This had to do mainly with corsets, which generally went away a hundred years ago.
In a way this problem of supply and demand and the resulting price talks to the question of a gas tax, which was discussed yesterday by Lynne at Left in Lowell. A tax on a product which has a fluctuating demand, based upon price, is not a steady revenue stream for the Government. (I left a comment there this AM (after comment 6) but my comment has yet to show up.)
Regards -- Cliff
Price manipulation, first by Enron, and now by the investment banks who hired up the Enron trading team when they became available, makes diagnosing the actual market forces almost impossible. Check out the FERC oversight lists that include key investment banks in addition to the oil companies you might expect. Our "supply" is meted out of the commodity exchanges, not the refineries. Our "demand" is far more constant than any of these recent fluctuations can explain. Worst of all, price up or price down, the losers are the ones paying at the pump for a commodity far cheaper to produce than we are ever allowed to pay.
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