Oil prices on the futures markets have reached the same heights as seen during the Katrina disaster: over $70 per barrel, the New York Times reports.
Remember less than two years ago:
Oil prices eased from new highs Friday as dealers pocketed profits from a long record-breaking run after escalating violence in Iraq took U.S. crude close to $50 a barrel….
U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said there had not yet been a large enough disruption to warrant tapping U.S. emergency stockpiles.
“The president has made it clear that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is to be used for the purposes for which it was intended, a disruption of such proportions that it’s called for. I don’t think we’re there yet,†Snow said in an interview with the financial cable news channel CNBC.
Hedge fund manager Peter Thiel, president of Clarium Capital LLC, said a change in President Bush’s administration policy about the SPR was only probable if oil prices went as high as $55 or $60 a barrel.
“Prices would have to go higher, to $55 or $60, to start getting enough pressure on the SPR issue. At $55-$60 the U.S. economy goes into a recession and you could then have a major political intervention.â€
Less than a year ago, analysts were hyperventilating as oil reached $60 a barrel:
The price of a barrel of US benchmark oil has broken through the $60-mark and is trading at near record levels.
There is the spectre of disruption to supplies, consumer demand for oil products such as petrol has remained high while the thirst of fast-growing economies like China and India is proving difficult to slake.
In 1999, oil was priced at just a smidge above $10 a barrel. Even adjusting for inflation, these prices well surpass those of the late seventies.
There is no hurricane swamping an oil refinery. What’s coming this summer?
