A blog posting by David Hackett examines the reasons behind the recent high prices of North Sea Brent Crude oil relative to West Texas Intermediate Crude (WTI), noting that these two crudes historically traded at close to the same price. The huge increase in oil production from North Dakota has disrupted traditional oil transportation and supply patterns - there is no efficient way to transport oil south of Oklahoma to the refineries on the Gulf coast. North Sea Brent is trading at about $20 more per barrel.
Hackett also discusses the significant price difference between Alaska's North Slope (ANS) crude oil and "Western Canadian Select" (WCS) - a blend of 25 different oil streams from Western Canada marketed as a heavy oil benchmark.
On April 4, the ANS crude price was about $17 more per barrel than WTI, while WCS was priced at $23 below WTI - a difference of $40 per barrel. With this "huge arbitrage," Hackett predicts that the Canadian producers will work hard to move their oil to the West Coast, potentially displacing Alaska's crude.
Hackett is President of Stillwater Associates, a consulting firm in the petroleum, power and energy sectors.
OPEC, Libya and the laws of supply and deanmd are not responsible for high gasoline prices. The high oil prices are dictated by the fraudulent round-trip trades of the dark pool trading in the Intercontinental Exchange(ICE) in Atlanta. The international Big Oil/big banking cabal owns ICE. ICE operates outside of U.S. law. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission does not have any jurisdiction over ICE, bribed by Big Oil. ICE's energy speculators and traders can ratchet-up the oil price anytime they feel like it, and for any excuse, for their own profit and on the behalf of Big Oil, through the use of round-trip trades. Google the Global Oil Scam. ICE is a super Enron. Oil is too crtical a resource to be controlled by greedy traders, greedy speculators and greedy corporations. If the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group does not investigate ICE, then, it is a waste of time and taxpayers' dollars. The Working Group has to seize, immediately, the trading records of ICE, before they sre destroyed.
Posted by: Marcio | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 10:04 PM