[p2p-research] any insights on oil price manipulation?

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Chris

On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 5:08 PM, chris cook <cojock at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Michel
>
> Having now had a chance to read Sepp's posts, they raise interesting
> questions.
>
> I am certainly an agnostic on the subject of Climate Change, and the
> questions of the origins and amounts of hydrocarbons I am not qualified to
> address.
>
> But there is IMHO a "Peak Oil" consisting of the maximum sustainable level
> of hydrocarbon production, and the subjects of energy investment against
> energy return (never mind environmental damage of extraction). On the Oil
> Drum site these issues have been extensively debated, by people much better
> qualified than me.
>
> I'm interested in market structure, and in particular the uniquely toxic
> outcome of the profit motive in an intermediated market.
>
> I have no doubt whatever that one of the key driving forces behind
> commodity prices is the yield curve.
>
> Here, Shalom Hamou's idiosyncratic presentation of his ideas
>
> http://www.yield-curve.net/
>
> obscures a deep and powerful insight into commodity pricing (my bold)
>
> *"When the yield curve is inverted, because of profit maximization, Miners
> & Drillers prefer hoarding a higher proportion of their minerals in the
> ground (their preferred short-term assets) rather than extracting them and
> investing the proceeds in long-term instruments. Hence, the marginal cost of
> extraction of minerals becomes irrelevant to their market price as miners
> stop maximizing their output under the constraint: *"
>
> Easy oil is pretty much gone in the US, and the big boys sold out years
> ago, as they have in the North Sea. A new generation of easy gas is
> alreadycausing market issues and we can expect perverse outcomes and huge
> market volatility in the US gas market as a result.
>
> The deployment in the US of stripper wells, and new recovery techniques are
> purely a function of the market price. ie the marginal cost, which is the
> *other* key market price factor. But I think that apart from such
> investment decisions, what production IS in the hands of Big Oil is subject
> to the market disciplines of profit maximisation as Hamou outlines.
>
> As I said, the only cure to profit maximisation is a Peer to Peer Market
> 3.0, and a move from transaction profits to service provision. This
> transition is in fact already taking place, as sovereign nations assert ever
> greater control over their own resources.
>
> Plenty more to say, but no time now!
>
> Best egarss
>
> Chris
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:27:28 +0700
> Subject: any insights on oil price manipulation?
> From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> To: p2presearch at listcultures.org
> CC: cojock at hotmail.com
>
>   From Sepp:
>
> Does anyone else have a feeling that oil prices may be purposely steered in
> a desired direction, that changes in oil prices are not necessarily due to a
> physical shortage of oil but to a refusal to develop new (already known)
> sources and ‘judicious’ buying/selling of oil futures to influence the price
> level?
> My ideas on this are in these two blog posts:
> http://blog.hasslberger.com/2008/02/the_peak_oil_deception_squeezi.html
> http://blog.hasslberger.com/2008/11/renewable_coal_oil_and_gas_hyd.html
>
>
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-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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