Crude Prices Skyrocket: $11 Rise in One Day

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ivan Seeking
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Rise
Click For Summary
Crude oil prices have surged by $11 in a single day, marking the largest increase ever recorded, with predictions suggesting prices could reach $150 by July. Gas prices have risen consistently, reflecting limited refining capacity and increased demand from countries like India and China. Historical context shows crude prices have skyrocketed since the early 2000s, with some attributing this to market manipulation and the influence of oil companies. The discussion also touches on the potential for alternative energy solutions, such as nuclear power and solar energy, which have faced political and infrastructural challenges over the decades. Overall, the current trend raises concerns about future gas shortages and economic impacts.
  • #61
GRB 080319B said:
Is there an underlying cause for the increase in the price of oil e.g. speculators, supply shock, increasing energy demand, depreciation of the US$ wrt other currencies, or something else?
or a combination of those factors.

There is the speculation on the commodities exchange, there has been increasing demand in Asia (China and India), depreciation/devaluation of the dollar makes oil more expensive, and a holdback on supply (producers not inclined to produce more, but they could).


As for how long it takes to build a nuclear unit, the NRC has developed a Combined construction Operating License (COL) to streamline the regulatory process. Once the license in granted, it is expected to take 60 months (but probably longer, e.g. 72+ mo) to contruct a unit. Multiple units per site would reduce the construction time per unit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Construction_and_Operating_License
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-licensing/col-appl-guide.html

NRG in Texas and at least one other company have already put in orders for large forgings and long lead time components.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #62
I'm concerned about the effects of volatility. When investors see a meteoric rise in the price of a commodity, they will often flock to it, hoping to ride it until a downturn. The problem is that when the downturn comes, their portfolios will be badly balanced and they may be poorly positioned to get back into a more stable market, causing them to overpay to get back into other investments. Commodities markets are volatile, and that is expected, but mass movements of money out of large commodities to stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc might disrupt the US economy even more that ballooning oil prices could.
 
  • #63
DT_tokamak said:
Plasma stability is not a problem in modern tokamaks. The poloidal and toroidal coils keeps the plasma stable for the most part and the correction coils take care of the remainder of instabilities.

Energy input is not a problem either... we've been firing up tokamaks for decades and achieving fusion reactions. TFTR hit 500 million C. No troubles there. The only thing we need is to get more energy out than we put in. And that's simply a matter of dollars which will create us larger reactors... that's not a question of science.
We're not there yet, hence the goal of ITER to hopefully demonstrate the feasibility.

. . . . Following on from the PDX (Poloidal Diverter Experiment) and PLT (Princeton Large Torus) devices, it was hoped that TFTR would finally achieve fusion energy break-even. Unfortunately, the TFTR never achieved this goal. However it did produce major advances in confinement time and energy density, which ultimately contributed to the knowledge base necessary to build ITER. TFTR operated from 1982 to 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFTR

Achievements of TFTR - http://www.pppl.gov/projects/pages/tftr_achievements.html

TFTR did identify some instability issues, e.g. ballooning, but they also identified an enhanced reversed-shear mode during 1995, but TFTR was shutdown in 1997, so it's not clear that enhanced confinement methods are fully vetted.

PPPL said:
December 1993, for the first time in history, a reactor fuel mix of 50% deuterium and 50% tritium was used in a tokamak. Initial TFTR experiments yielded 6.0 million watts. By November, 1994, TFTR achieved 10.7 million watts of power, about 100 million times the power produced by tokamaks twenty years ago.

http://w3.pppl.gov/tftr/info/tftrparams.html - note Plasma Parameters for Shot 80539. While it achieved 10.7 MW of generated fusion power, the confinement time \tau was 0.21 sec. One needs to achieve continuous operation on the order of 3.156 E7 sec, or a 90% CF to approach performance of current LWRs.

Hopefully ITER will demonstrate or perfect some of the processes developed with TFTR.

For reference - http://www.pppl.gov/projects/pages/tftr_docs.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #64
The link to C-Span below covers a lot of territory regarding the effect of speculation.

http://www.c-span.org/Topics/Energy.aspx

It is a two hour video. To get the overall idea start at the 31 minute 30 second point and listen to Michael Greenberger fo 5 minutes.


Several items come to mind. A low six pecent margin (sometimes even lower) means someone can control $1,000,000 worth of oil with only $60,000, and a loan from a hedge fund.

The Enron Loophole and the End The Enron Loophole that never really ended. :rolleyes:
It amounts to leaving a large prcentage of trading that flys under the radar.

Foreign companies trading in this country are not regulated if there is a regulation in their own country.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #65
The price of copper had quadrupled before the price of oil ever doubled. What was this due to? Answer: demand from Asia.

I also dislike the term Enron Loophole. The Enron scandal revolved around wrongly practiced accounting procedures used to drive up the company's stock value and use it to pay off loses, which it never was able to do. I don't believe that for anytime during the trials of Ken Lay and various boardmembers was hedging ever suspected as being the primary downfall. Lying to your investors will get you no where.

If the hedgers are lying, this may be different, but if they are making money from oil why should there be congressinal trials?
 
  • #66
DrClapeyron said:
The price of copper had quadrupled before the price of oil ever doubled. What was this due to? Answer: demand from Asia.

I also dislike the term Enron Loophole. The Enron scandal revolved around wrongly practiced accounting procedures used to drive up the company's stock value and use it to pay off loses, which it never was able to do. I don't believe that for anytime during the trials of Ken Lay and various boardmembers was hedging ever suspected as being the primary downfall. Lying to your investors will get you no where.

If the hedgers are lying, this may be different, but if they are making money from oil why should there be congressional trials?

There are congressional trials because Americans are in denial. We want to believe that something other than supply and demand are at work. The reality is that it is ONLY supply and demand -- as you say above...
 
  • #67
DrClapeyron said:
The price of copper had quadrupled before the price of oil ever doubled. What was this due to? Answer: demand from Asia.

I also dislike the term Enron Loophole. The Enron scandal revolved around wrongly practiced accounting procedures used to drive up the company's stock value and use it to pay off loses, which it never was able to do. I don't believe that for anytime during the trials of Ken Lay and various boardmembers was hedging ever suspected as being the primary downfall. Lying to your investors will get you no where.

If the hedgers are lying, this may be different, but if they are making money from oil why should there be congressinal trials?

Comparing the increase in the price of copper to the increase in the price of oil is apples and oranges. There was a well defined increase in the demand for copper which came with the building boom, it is not so obvious for oil.

The Enron Loophole didn't apply strictly to Enron.:rolleyes:

It’s the "Enron loophole," which exempts energy speculators who make trades electronically from US regulation. Some argue that the unregulated energy speculation, codified in 2000, can account for $20 to $25 in the jump in oil prices.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/congress-seeks.html
 
  • #68
wildman said:
There are congressional trials because Americans are in denial. We want to believe that something other than supply and demand are at work. The reality is that it is ONLY supply and demand -- as you say above...

I agree with the denial part, but that applies to the people who think that nothing has changed in recent years.

There are congressional investigations because someone finally insisted that it was time to look at the real world. A large portion of oil futures contracts have been unregulated.

http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/IMGJune3Testimony0.pdf
 
  • #69
...JOHN WALCOTT: Not always equal and not all was exactly opposite and not all was immediate. But one of the things the Iranians can do very quickly is simply sink one oil tanker in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz, just one, and the insurance rates will take care of the rest. And you'll have $200, $250 a barrel oil. So that's one thing to think about. [continued]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06062008/transcript.html
 
  • #70
IMO, we need a Manhattan Project for energy - at least a significant fraction of the effort and money that we have put into Bush's war - and it needs to start NOW!. I think the algae-to-biodiesel, and perhaps the algae-to-ethanol options are the best candidates for a complete solution, today.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211274

I believe Obama is calling for 5 million new green-collar jobs, but we need more; much much more. And the best part is that if we build it, they will come - jobs that is. We have over $500,000,000,000 a year as revenues currently sent to foreign oil producers, and I came up with that number quite some time ago, so it is certainly higher now. The energy solution is a gold mine. Five-hundred billion dollars per year represents an average annual income of about $1700 for every person in the US.

At the time that I checked, foreign oil suppliers accounted for 60% of our trade deficit.
 
Last edited:
  • #71
So,
We solve the oil problem once and for all. We will have more than enough here.

We eliminate much of the need for our military to protect the energy supply globally, so, with proper management, this will result in dramatic reductions in spending.

We create an entirely new geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamic where we don't need the ME, or Venezuela, or any of the OPEC members for that matter, for their oil supplies. Nor do we make enemies all over the world.

We have a nearly CO2-neutral energy base. Global warming or not, done.

We create 500 Billion+ dollars worth of new jobs and commerce

We reduce the trade deficit by about 60%

We avoid a complete melt-down of the US economy, which WILL come sooner or later, and likely sooner, if we don't solve the problem.

All opposed?
 
Last edited:
  • #72
Oh yes, and potentially we avoid an energy war or wars with China and India..maybe worth mentioning.
 
  • #73
Okay and one last point: If we commit to spend as much and as fast on a national project for energy as we have the war in Iraq, the payback time would be about 1 year nationally, so for tax revenues, what, a few years, maybe five?

Hell, I'd borrow money from China for that one!
 
Last edited:
  • #74
I should have listened to Warren in that "[url[/URL]:

[QUOTE=Om]
I'm hoping to develop the worlds most efficient, practical vehicle of course. (bicycles do not count)

[QUOTE=chroot]
It sure would be cool if people finally realized that bicycles should count, but I guess that's not relevant here.

- Warren
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

I think I'll buy a bike tomorrow.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #75
Good luck shipping your food by bike. The price and supply of diesel and heating oil, and oil for power production, and for manufacturing, are probably far more signficant than gasoline.

The commercial transportation infrastructure depends primarily on diesel... as do activities like farming, and construction.
 
Last edited:
  • #76
On the up side, the price of fuel is helping to revive the manufacturing base in the US. Some Chinese-made products cannot compete with domestic production due to the increased shipping costs. One of the benefactors is the US steel industry.
 
  • #77
Ivan Seeking said:
Good luck shipping your food by bike. The price and supply of diesel and heating oil, and oil for power production, and for manufacturing, are probably far more signficant than gasoline.

The commercial transportation infrastructure depends primarily on diesel... as do activities like farming, and construction.

My girlfriend's dad is a farmer in Pennsylvania and he runs his entire operation, including the heating of his house, the year-round heating of soil, running greenhouses, his two trucks that he ships food in, and his personal vehicles, on waste vegetable oil collected for free from the same restaurants he sells food to. The possibility is definitely there for people to ween themselves off of fossil fuels.
 
  • #78
Ivan Seeking said:
Good luck shipping your food by bike. The price and supply of diesel and heating oil, and oil for power production, and for manufacturing, are probably far more signficant than gasoline.

The commercial transportation infrastructure depends primarily on diesel... as do activities like farming, and construction.

I was discussing this with my acquaintance from India the other day. I asked him how his country could feed so many people with so few problems. He stated that India has no large farms like we have in America. Virtually all the cities in India are supplied with food from small farms within 100 km. Almost no one has refrigerators, so they only eat fresh foods.

I told my acquaintance that perhaps India would be a better role model for the world. He just laughed.

Of course this idea is a bit impractical in a lot of places as we've migrated into less and less arable regions, driven by our diesel delivered delectables.

I think I'm going to miss eating cherries from South America.
Even though they look and taste just like the ones from the trees in my yard, there is something exotic about eating something that was grown 6000 miles away.
 
  • #79
I live in an apartment and I still grow everything I possibly can myself, keeping herb and vegetable gardens on my deck in pots and troughs. There's definitely a trend, at least in the places I've lived most recently, toward eating locally grown food.
 
  • #80
loseyourname said:
I live in an apartment and I still grow everything I possibly can myself, keeping herb and vegetable gardens on my deck in pots and troughs. There's definitely a trend, at least in the places I've lived most recently, toward eating locally grown food.

For the second year now, we're buy a subscription to a local CSA - community supported agriculture. We find a local farm and pay them, monthly or for the season, to grow our fruits and veggies. We drop by every week to pick up our load of fresh, local produce.

The one we were in last week grew way, way too many beets for our taste - I'm hoping this one will grow lots of spinach!

There are many web sites about CSA - here's one:

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
 
  • #81
loseyourname said:
My girlfriend's dad is a farmer in Pennsylvania and he runs his entire operation, including the heating of his house, the year-round heating of soil, running greenhouses, his two trucks that he ships food in, and his personal vehicles, on waste vegetable oil collected for free from the same restaurants he sells food to. The possibility is definitely there for people to ween themselves off of fossil fuels.

McDonalds has a fleet of trucks in Germany running on, can you guess...? McDiesel. Turns out that they use enough oil to run the trucks that supply the restaurants. But they would have to collect the oil and make biodiesel, which is an approved fuel; at least here they would. Raw used or new oil is not a quality or approved fuel. And we don't use enough oil to power the country. But algae appears to be capable of providing the yields required to be practical as a fuel option - all in all at least 20 or 30 times better than corn-ethanol - and clean diesel cars are ready and hitting the markets now. Also, you can make Biodiesel, Ethanol, and Hydrogen from it, so it is the ultimate flex-source, so to speak.
 
Last edited:
  • #82
lisab said:
For the second year now, we're buy a subscription to a local CSA - community supported agriculture. We find a local farm and pay them, monthly or for the season, to grow our fruits and veggies. We drop by every week to pick up our load of fresh, local produce.

The one we were in last week grew way, way too many beets for our taste - I'm hoping this one will grow lots of spinach!

There are many web sites about CSA - here's one:

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Ack! Beets... My mother used to try and force feed us those awful things. They are the only food I can truly claim that I hate. I say we make methanol out of them all. Better yet, send them all to 'Tiger Ethanol' in China. Just the thought of the smell of billions of gallons of fermenting beets makes me want to ^%@$#@$&.

sorry...

Neat idea about the CSA.
Here's a blurb from one within bicycling distance from my house:
Intensive urban agriculture is an idea that has been around for some time but now the idea is growing due to an interest in things like the expanding "local food movement", people's desire to connect with the farmers who grow their food and rising fuel/food costs. Also it's been proven that small, intensively farmed plots are many times more productive than conventional farming methods.

Taking into consideration increasing food prices, increasing fuel prices and the high productivity of small urban plots it just makes sense to grow food where we live.

hmmmm... reminds me of a foreign country someone was just talking about.
 
  • #83
OmCheeto said:
Ack! Beets... My mother used to try and force feed us those awful things. They are the only food I can truly claim that I hate. I say we make methanol out of them all. Better yet, send them all to 'Tiger Ethanol' in China. Just the thought of the smell of billions of gallons of fermenting beets makes me want to ^%@$#@$&.

OmCheeto, we are of one mind on the beet issue! My aunt made me eat them once as a child, and it was the only time in my life I was FORCED to eat anything. They're vile, nasty things, beets!
 
  • #87
I'm bumping this because I really want an opinion on whether or not what KO says is true, that it's mostly the government's fault for the oil prices we have today.
 
  • #88
WarPhalange said:
I'm bumping this because I really want an opinion on whether or not what KO says is true, that it's mostly the government's fault for the oil prices we have today.

The government definitely could have done a better job. KO was dumping on McCain though, and there is plenty of blame to share.
 
  • #89
KO makes it pretty clear that he:

1) Is a liberal.
2) A democrat at that.
3) HATES republicans.
4) Has a man crush on Obama.

So you have to take what he says with some salt. Which is why I'm asking if he's on the money or making things up. I always thought KO was a pretty good journalist, but then again I'm comparing him to O'Reilly, so that's not saying much.
 
  • #90
Oil tumbles $5 as China raises gas prices

Crude prices fall after China says it will raise gas and diesel prices and sentiment spreads about softening demand.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices sank nearly $5 on Thursday after China said it would raise gas prices by lifting subsidies that have been blamed for driving oil prices higher. The move could curb demand from the country's rapidly growing economy.[continued]
http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/19/markets/oil/?postversion=2008061915
 

Similar threads

CO2 shortage affecting beer and meat supply in US
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
Buy and Hold Beats Active Investing
  • · Replies 46 ·
2
Replies
46
Views
5K
Swollen Cedar River Floods Iowa Cities
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
4K
My list of the top five heavyweight boxers of all time
  • · Replies 35 ·
2
Replies
35
Views
6K
Static electricity (like tree lightning) on my ceiling?
  • · Replies 24 ·
Replies
24
Views
3K
News Johnson & Johnson to pay $2 billion for false marketing
  • · Replies 10 ·
Replies
10
Views
4K
News Does Offshore Drilling Impact Gas Prices as Claimed by McCain?
  • · Replies 54 ·
2
Replies
54
Views
7K
Is the Rising Cost of Food Forcing Us to Change Our Diets?
  • · Replies 81 ·
3
Replies
81
Views
10K
Close Calls from Falling Objects Out of High Rises
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
The Rise of Incentivized Competitions for Humanity
  • · Replies 14 ·
Replies
14
Views
3K