Saudi Arabian ministers were saying going in to the meeting that they didn't want to cut output. The other member states were seeing dollar $ign$ and didn't want to hear the Saudis speaking truth about high prices causing demand to fall off. OPEC says: we'll cut 500,000 barrels a day from our output! See if your prices fall then! Saudi Arabia says: Not so much! We'll BOOST ours 200,000 barrels a day; see if your demand falls then!
The Saudis have it right on this one, and once again are showing the world that they have more sense than the rest of the OPEC member states put together.
Here is a rule. A law, even. When price goes up, demand goes down. When price goes down, demand goes up. When demand goes up, price goes up, and vice versa. You may have heard of it, if someone besides a taxpayer paid for your education. Anywho, the Saudis think it's better to keep people buying at least the same amount of oil for 4x what they used to pay, than to have them paying 6x what they used to pay, but buying less and in a mood to develop alternative fuel sources.
You know how much E85 we'd be burning if oil were $20/barrel? NONE. You know how much oil shale and sand we and the Israelis would be getting ready to process? None. OPEC has been letting prices get so high that the number of miles driven in (of all places!) the United States has actually FALLEN year-over-year.
For some reason (coughleftismcoughdemocratbiascough) the mainstream press has decided to spike the heck out of this story, and the price of oil is holding steady in spite of a hurricane the size of the entire gulf putting oil rigs out of commission for. . . no reason, I guess.
This is apparently a developing story and breaking news. I listen to talk radio all day, with left-leaning news organizations saying the news during breaks and didn't hear about this at all. Some sort of a little breeze is blowing in the southern part of the country, apparently, and I guess that's all that's happening in the world today. ABC, NBC, FOX, hello? The future of the world's energy market, that's all! No need to pay attention to that?! I guess the AP must not have included "ZOMG BRITNEY SPEARS!!!1!" in the title when they put this on the wire. Oh, wait, they didn't put it up yet. I guess after AP picks it up this will be a story. ::shakes head::
Read up, and tell your friends. I read about this at Hyundai Aftermarket, a CAR forum. Great job scooping the little guys, media giants!
MSN Money has it.
the Telegraph has it (not on the front page).
Money Morning (who?) has it.
Saudi Arabia (the part that likes us, not the part that's trying to kill us): Thanks, how about a little more of that?
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