Oil’s roller coaster ride

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Oil’s roller coaster ride

August 17, 2009 – 10:05 am – No Comment

Oil prices have been on a roller coaster ride over the past few months. It appears as though it can’t really make up its mind as to where it wants to go. It has been hovering between $60 and $70 a barrel for some time, but has more recently been settling just above $71 a barrel.

However, today oil fell below the $66 a barrel mark when investors became worried about demand for crude will very slowly recover. Even with the good economic growth data coming out of Japan, oil and stocks decided to take a dive today.

The benchmark crude for delivery in September fell down to $65.88, a decrease of $1.63 in European electronic trading. This was after it fell $3.01 to $67.51 on Friday.

So of course, this typically means that you’ll start seeing another decline at the pump. With the national average hovering around $2.60 a gallon, gas is still a lot cheaper than the same time last year, but any decline in the cost is a welcome price reduction.

Ever since the beginning of the summer, commodity prices have increased a lot, which isn’t exclusive to oil, but the increase includes metals and other commodities that have decreased dramatically since last summer’s bubble burst.

I can imagine, though, that the decrease in the price of oil will cause OPEC to do something to “alter” the cost.