Papamoka Straight Talk: Oil Prices Peaked and Tanking Politically

Investors that drove the price of a barrel of oil to $147 are now bailing on the former gold standard of the world economy. One thing is certain, the pendulum of oil being the energy standard has now swung back but it is just too damn late. Every single nation around the world is researching the science needed to get the oil monkey off of all of our backs. If you are an investor in energy futures then you might want to start moving your funds into solar, wind, hydrogen, and electric emerging technologies.

One of the largest users of oil products in the world is the United States of America, and in the screw you format with gasoline prices at $4.00 per gallon the people of America are fighting back and conserving not just gasoline. The high price of gasoline is reflected in every aspect of the American economy and jobs are being lost as the price of raw materials expand exponentially with the high cost of not only producing the raw materials but delivering them.

Earlier today I saw a news piece on MSNBC about one investment advisor stating that the price of oil is going to crash down to $65 per barrel. It had me thinking and looking for any reason why it would fall so far, so fast…

NEW YORK - Oil fell to its lowest price in three months Friday, briefly touching the $111 level after the dollar muscled higher and OPEC predicted the world’s thirst for fuel next year will fall to its lowest point since 2002.

Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $1.24 to settle at $113.77 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after falling to $111.34, its lowest price since May 2 and more than $35 — or 24 percent — below its July 11 trading record above $147.

As high energy costs force countries around the globe to cut back on consumption, crude prices have plummeted and are now within striking distance of $100 a barrel, a level first reached Feb. 19. - MSNBC

That article lead me to research what we as American’s are doing to find new sources of energy and I hit a gold mine over at the Washington Post. Record numbers of permits to find new sources of the go go juice we love so much is breaking through the roof to tell Wall Street speculators to just screw! And it is about time…

Heavy industry has invaded the countryside because of something called the Marcellus Shale. It's a layer of hard, black rock, more than a mile down. Trapped in tiny pores of that rock is a huge quantity of natural gas. The Marcellus Shale could become what people in the natural gas business call a big play.

"It's a gold rush, really. It's a boom," said Steve Rupert, an executive with Range Resources, which is drilling aggressively in the rolling farmland southwest of Pittsburgh.
This is the world of 21st-century energy, which around here looks surprisingly like 19th-century energy. There is little evidence that the old, conventional sources of energy are about to disappear, or that the free market by itself is going to drive a transition to clean, renewable power.

Snip

The state of Pennsylvania is on pace to issue more than 7,000 permits for oil and gas drilling this year, more than twice as many as five years ago. Coal mining is expanding, driven by rising coal exports. With the Marcellus looking so promising, Pennsylvania farmers are suddenly flush with cash from leasing mineral rights. - Washington Post

Seven thousand permits in Pennsylvania alone! That is just one state, what about the other oil rich states in America? Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska and the list goes on and on. So why is the Bush administration and John McCain begging to drill on the richest fishing zones off the Atlantic coast?

Make no mistake about it, this energy crisis was Wall Street driven and the current political atmosphere of fear from President Bush has been the fuel for that fire. John McCain has not been shy about continuing the feeding frenzy of the people of America to benefit the few. He does not see an economy in crisis simply because he or his family is not living from pay check to pay check. People worth more than or close to $100,000,000 dollars rarely do.