$100, $110, $120, $135, … $150!! Oh man, it might happen!  Oil just keeps on moving up.  We got global growth, higher demand for oil, the summer season, inflation, US dollars declining in value, just some of the things that are contributing to the high oil prices.  However, there is another conspiracy about price manipulation.

The issue is that OPEC and the United States could be purposely stocking their reserves to make the prices higher.  The reasoning was to contribute to making more efficient automobiles and reduce the amount of carbon emissions.  If this is true, it definitely is working as people are feeling the effects of oil and are driving less for that matter.  How do they do this?  United States is hiding the oil in offshore reserves.  Hence, the buying continues but the oil never gets to the states but of course we still get hit with the price.

Enron did the same thing with the California Rolling Blackouts.  They said there just was not enough electricity to go around and kept selling their electricity for higher and higher.  They had a monopoly on California.  This could be similar to what we are experiencing now.  We get all our oil from US companies.  There’s no way we could stop them from raising those rates, buying that oil, and hiding it to make those prices higher.  This might be a great way to start cutting the car emissions, but I hate to know that it required this type of manipulation to get it going.

For one thing, oil will continue to rise in the long-term.  I do think it is quite high right now, and it is due to go down.  It might be until Fall or later, but it will go down and adjust.  It’s odd how oil is having even more of an impact than gold prices.  I do believe we will see some oil corrections before the end of this year, but I cannot give a green or red light to the path to take in oil for the short-term.