FILL UP TODAY:

[Uncle B]

Georgian journalist shot during live coverage (video and story link)

[Bostongambler]

Saw it on the news Uncle. pop,pop,pop, snipper

[gc_pres]

that "sniper" doesn't have a very good shot.

[Uncle B]

Originally Posted by gc_pres

that "sniper" doesn't have a very good shot.

Yeah, i think he was aiming for the cameraman.


The girl is actually pretty cute....No clue wtf she was saying, but, i bet she'd look good in a thong, eating a corndog.

[Uncle B]

Gas seems to have gone down a few cents again, since the last time i filled up.


Topped off the wifes boxy little contraption a bit ago, and reg unleaded was *only* $3.82 a gallon.

I guess thats bound to continue though, up till election time....Rep can't have that constant anger come ballot time is suppose....Maybe we'll see a $3.50 gallon before it's all said and done...

[WhereYaMamiAt]

3.65 down in florida uncle...still ridiculous but beats 4 bucks a month ago.

[Uncle B]

Originally Posted by WhereYaMamiAt

3.65 down in florida uncle...still ridiculous but beats 4 bucks a month ago.

What part of Florida are you in??? I got the price above in Jacksonville on Sunday, and thought i had gotten a deal...lol

then again, you can usually drive 5 miles in any direction here, and see 10 deifferent prices on standard fuel...usually only 7¢ or 8¢ higheror lower though...

You must be further south in Fla than Jax?

[WhereYaMamiAt]

yeah im actually around the pensacola area....so were just a few hours apart....but now its 3.50

[Total Square]

AP
Report: One trader held 11 pct of Nymex contracts
Thursday August 21, 12:15 pm ET
Report: Speculators may have played larger role in oil market swings that once thought

NEW YORK (AP) -- A single energy conglomerate held 11 percent of all contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange at one point last month, according to a published report Thursday, suggesting that speculators may have played a larger part in volatile oil markets than once thought.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission made an unusual request last month for data from Vitol Group, a private Swiss energy company that regulators thought was helping industrial firms get the oil they needed, according to The Washington Post.

The commission discovered, however, that the Vitol would be better described as a speculator, trading oil contracts to turn profits rather than assisting companies that actually needed oil delivered for their operations.

The report comes one month after the Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets, chaired by the commission, released an interim report saying record oil prices were the result of "fundamental supply and demand factors."

"It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.

Dingell told the Post it was "difficult to comprehend how the CFTC would allow a trader" to acquire such a large oil inventory "and not scrutinize this position any sooner."

A number of lawmakers have blamed speculators for the spike in oil prices and last week, four Democratic senators asked for an investigation into the commission's report, which they said was based on flawed information.

The commission never named Vitol. The Wall Street Journal identified the company in a report Wednesday which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The Post cited two anonymous sources that it said had direct knowledge of the commission's request in their report.

The commission investigation showed Vitol was one of the most active traders of oil on Nymex as prices reached record levels.

By June 6, Vitol had amassed contracts equal to 57.7 million barrels of oil, about three times the amount the United States consumes daily. On that day, the price for a barrel of oil spiked $11 to settle at $138.54, per barrel, valuing Vitol's oil holding at nearly $8 billion.

Commission documents do not show how much Vitol had put down to acquire that many contracts. Nymex allows traders to acquire contracts by putting up margins, which can amount to a fraction of the actual worth.

So-called "swap dealers" operate in oil markets by investing on behalf of hedge funds and wealthy individuals who have no plans to take delivery, or buy an actual contract for oil.

The commission's data show that at the end of July, just four swap dealers held one-third of all Nymex oil contracts that bet prices would increase.

Last month, the commission reclassified a huge oil trader as a noncommercial speculator. Industry analysts immediately began to rethink what might be moving oil prices.

Commodities traders rely on weekly reports from the commission that classifies market players as commercial or speculative, without releasing names.

Those reports are coming under increased scrutiny as traders begin to question the transparency of the market.

It is difficult to classify market players, however, because some banks and hedge funds actually own infrastructure, such as storage tanks and pipelines and power plants. Like airlines and other businesses that try to protect themselves from crude price swings, they too may be hedging .

Vitol spokeswoman Victoria Dix declined comment to the Post. Vitol said in a statement that it had not been contacted by the commission about its classification.

The commission continues to pour over a massive amount of data submitted by large traders and it is asking for additional information.

Report: One trader held 11 pct of Nymex contracts: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

[StarnetGypsy]

(not sure if this has been posted yet, but i haven't seen it. this is from USGS and i've seen docs on tv about Montana/Dakota towns growing at a crazy rate due to oil drilling $$$$, so this being the case, why the f*ck do we need to drill offshore ... i ask you, why? because we're being f*cking lied to by the powers that be ... again!)

USGS Release: 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate— (4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM)

3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—

Released: 4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM

Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communication
119 National Center
Reston, VA 20192 Clarice Nassif Ransom
Phone: 703-648-4299

David Ozman
Phone: 720-244-4543

----------------------

Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

Related Podcasts

3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota and Montana http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/podcast..._Formation.mp3

Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.

New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.

The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.

The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.

"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."

The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.

USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.

Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.

At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.

Results of the assessment can be found at USGS Energy Resources Program, USGS-ERP.

For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at U.S. Geological Survey: USGS CoreCast.

[Superfly]

And Pelosi won't allow a vorte on drilling because she owns about 7 percent of
Boone Pickens wind farm. I'm surprised someone hasn't shot her yet.

[Uncle B]

I'll be damned....Quite a jump here, since the last time i noticed..seems to be 11 or 12¢ higher again...

[StarnetGypsy]

ayep. i asked about that the other day, as to why, and no takers.

funny thing is crude is down in price per barrel, so wtf, why the increase? refining capacity down?

[Uncle B]

Originally Posted by StarnetGypsy

ayep. i asked about that the other day, as to why, and no takers.

funny thing is crude is down in price per barrel, so wtf, why the increase? refining capacity down?

I was thinking maybe someone forgot to put the cap back on tight on one of the tankers.

[StarnetGypsy]

hell, could be!

it went right back down today, by 10c

[Uncle B]

Originally Posted by StarnetGypsy

hell, could be!

it went right back down today, by 10c

no shit?


guess i shoulda held off....

[teazeman]

week vs week the trend has been downward, although there are occasional up days. the biggest difference the market has versus 5-10 yrs ago are the HUGE swings in dailey pricing, very volitile whereas it once moved a little one way or the other. the market now moves as much in one day as it used to move in one month. like rolling the dice, one days difference can mean several thousands per truckload in potential losses.

[nino brown]

Reuters
Oil rallies to $117 on hurricane fears
Tuesday August 26, 11:01 am ET


LONDON (Reuters) - Oil rose nearly $2 to around $117 a barrel on Tuesday, as concerns grew about possible disruption to U.S. offshore oil and gas output from a strengthening Hurricane Gustav.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav, a category one hurricane, had strengthened slightly in the central Caribbean as it churned toward southwestern Haiti.

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Weather models showed it either heading in a westerly direction toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula or steering northwest and moving into the central Gulf of Mexico by early Sunday, to potentially disrupt offshore oil and gas production.

U.S. crude, which fell more than $2 earlier in the session, was $1.86 higher at $116.97 by 10:44 a.m. EDT. London Brent crude rose $1.59 to $115.62.

Eric Wilhelm, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc, said Hurricane Gustav may threaten production areas off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas by the middle of next week by which time the storm may have gained in intensity to be a major hurricane.

"All of the oil platforms off Texas and Louisiana will probably be at risk, but that's real long-range," Wilhelm told Reuters, adding that Gustav was expected to enter the Gulf of Mexico by Monday possibly as a category 3 hurricane.

Earlier, oil fell as the dollar hit a six-month high against the euro on Tuesday after weak German data highlighted a flagging euro zone economy. Dollar strength can limit the appeal of oil and commodities as an inflation hedge.

"Short term trading on oil should now be dominated this week by tracking Gustav," said Olivier Jakob, oil analyst at Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland.

Germany said its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.5 percentage points on the quarter in the April-June period, the first contraction since 2004 and raising concerns Europe's biggest economy could be headed for a recession.

Oil has fallen sharply from a record high of $147.27 reached on July 11 in part due to evidence of a global slowdown in energy demand. It remains up about 15 percent so far this year.

Investors were also keeping an eye on tension between the West and Russia over Georgia.

Russia on Tuesday recognised two rebel regions of Georgia -- South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- as independent states, defying pressure from the United States and other western powers.

While the conflict in Georgia has led to some disruption in Azeri oil shipments through Georgia, analysts said this latest developent was having little influence on oil prices so far.

"Energy markets have not yet focused on what this latest escalation could mean for a potential disruption in energy supplies," said Edward Meir, analyst at MF Global, in a report.

"Until we get better clarity on this latter issue, we expect the price reverberations from this situation to be relatively contained."

(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori and James Topham in Tokyo and Alex Lawler in London; editing by William Hardy)

[Uncle B]

Oil rose nearly $2 to around $117 a barrel on Tuesday, as concerns grew about possible disruption to U.S. offshore oil and gas output from a

LOL


So, nothing happened...they just think it 'might'..