Oil breaks $100, closes just below, I toldya so

Written on the original Movable Type site and recovered from the Internet Archive.

“Santa will bring $100 oil for christmas”. That is when oil just hit over $80/barrel for the first time. People thought I was crazy then.

Now From Bloomberg:
Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) – Crude oil was trading above $99 a
barrel after falling from a record in New York on gains in U.S.
gasoline and diesel inventories.

Gasoline supplies climbed 1.99 million barrels to 207.8
million last week, an Energy Department report showed, outpacing
a 1.5 million-barrel increase predicted in a Bloomberg News
survey. Crude futures yesterday touched a record $100.09 before
closing lower.

``The levels of stockpiles indicate markets seem to be
adequately supplied, so there’s not too much concern around
about a physical shortage,‘’ said Gerard Burg, a minerals and
energy economist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Melbourne.
``There seems to be a continual acceptance of prices at higher
levels.‘’

Crude oil for February delivery traded at $99.27 a barrel,
up 9 cents, in after-hours electronic trading on the New York
Mercantile Exchange at 9:53 a.m. in Singapore. Yesterday the
contract fell 44 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $99.18 a barrel.
Prices are up 79 percent from a year ago.