Saturday, June 7, 2008

Prices for oil and oil-based stuff keep rising

Glimpses of the peak on a Vermont Saturday:
  • Oil reached $138-139/barrel this week. Traveling through a few different American areas this week (Indiana, Michigan, Vermont) I saw pump prices moving around $4/gallon and rising.
  • Oil-dependent product prices are rising, in one key element of the peak oil model. This hits a wide variety of stuff, groceries to diapers, "antifreeze to cleaning fluids to pharmaceuticals." And this rebounds (literally) on driving:
"the price of asphalt is up 65 percent so far this year – and municipalities' and states' road departments are cutting back. This may mean bumpier roads ahead."
  • Another essential peak sign: oil exploration is getting more desper - ambitious. As the easy to get oil fades, the harder to get becomes more attractive, and research more readily affordable: "Fields that were once thought too small, too deep under the sea, or in too dangerous a country, are being rushed into production."
  • There's more talk that the current oil price rise is a bubble, meaning a price drop could be ahead. George Soros is saying this. As we've said before, the worst thing about this is the likelihood that Americans will stop being interested in oil and the peak.

(some of this via the essential Oil Drum)

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