And the profits grow

[Kevin]

No, not just in my uninformed, stupid, usa centric opinion as you so elequently put it. More like in the opinion of 200 mill+ Americans perhaps??

Just 10 years ago gas prices were around 1.30 a gallon, you mean to tell they've trippled in the last 10 years due to supply and demand all the sudden?? I dont buy that. But if you want to believe into all the hype and think that, be my guest. I bet you voted for Bush, didnt you? :rolleyes:

Our consumption has increased by about 3,000,000 bbl/day in the last 10 years. US production has decreased by about 1,000,000 bbl/day in the last 10 years. So that means 4,000,000 bbl/day more oil needs to be imported to the US in the last 10 years.

Where does that oil come from then? Mostly from the OPEC nations. And what have the OPEC nations been doing? In general they have tried to keep prices around $25 a barrel by using production quotas. The other benefit of this is that they maintain a surplus production capacity, which can be turned on pretty quickly in order to help meet demands. Of course OPEC nations don't always obey the quotas and the market still bounces around and OPEC doesn't forecast the future any better than anyone else. They under estimated the Asian market demand. Of course there are some non OPEC nations that are major producers. Russia is the 2nd largest producer in the world, but it's taken them the last 6 years to get back to 9,000,000 bbl/day capacity they were putting out over 14,000,000 bbl/day in 1975. That has an effect and OPEC tries to deal with it as well.

But there are 2 events that happened in 2003 that really messed things up for prices and things still aren't recovered. Venezuela which the previous years was producing around 3,500,000 bbl/day experienced a worker strike and production pretty much shut down for a few months. After the strike ended they've not gone above 2,600,000 bbl/day production. And in 2003 we invaded Iraq and shut down their oil production as well. They went from about 2,500,000 bbl/day to zero as well. So you have a growing market that suddenly has 6,000,000 bbl/day less production. The world chugs about 80,000,000 a day. So 7.5% of the worlds production shut off for several months. You think that won't have an effect?

So what happened, countries started to use their own reserves. So there is less buffer there now. So getting reservers back up as well as other issues with OPEC countries right now mean that while in the 90's OPEC used to be able to increase production over what they are doing by about 15,000,000 bbl/day, they now are able to only produce about 1,000,000 bbl/day more than they currently are. You think that won't affect prices? You think the fact that the US economy is weaker and the dollar is weaker won't affect prices?

If you really think this is the oil companies just screwing with us, then you need to get some more education. Am I saying that the oil companies don't do some manipulation? No. This is a free market they will do the best they can to make us pay as much as we can. But this is not some major collusion to get the prices jacked up, this is a real issue with supply and demand, and the US economy and other larger political issues. At least skim http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm and get some background information and google for some more.

If you don't want to believe anything from my sources give me some of your own that aren't covered in crap since you pulled them from your ass like your 200+ million.

I do believe prices will come back down in the future but I'm thinking a few years before we see any significant drops and I don't expect us to ever get back to a pre 2000 level.