Pique Oil

We passed a psychological barrier here in England a few weeks ago, when diesel and petrol passed £1.00 per litre. Once committed, (and once their pumps and forecourt signs had been adjusted to allow for the extra digit), it was obvious that we weren't going back. Premium price fuel is here to stay, and by way of celebrating it's new found freedom to rise, the prices are almost at £1.10 per litre for diesel, and we haven't even finished the first month of the new year.

Looking through the on-line news at their "Why are oil prices so high?" sub-sections, I found a bewildering list of reasons. Anything and everything around the globe was cited, storms, hurricanes, hostages.... One day, as a teaser, the oil prices were supposed to have fallen, because "America might have more reserves than it had thought", but next day, the same old song was being sung again. Up, up and away.

A minor war here, a nuclear building program there, anything could trigger a rise in oil prices. Except for a butterfly beating its wings in Africa. I haven't seen that one yet. So the butterflies are innocent, OK? And that means that this isn't chaos theory. The oil market isn't being perturbed by random happenings. This is a move.

Before certain people start banging on about the Bilderbergers or Iluminatii or Masons or the Priory of Sion, let me say that I don't believe that people are clever enough to form secret societies capable of running the world. The closest thing we have to them are the governments, and they're neither capable of keeping secrets or of running things without a cockup a day. They think they can do both, but look at today's news. America has cut the interest rate, not in a controlled manner, but in a desperate bid to try and keep stockbrokers and shareholders around the world from dumping their investments and running off back to their vaults with the cash. So, America does not control it's own economy anymore. A disparate group of investors and traders can call the shots, and the picture I get is of America having to dance to a tune it didn't put on the jukebox. Somebody else is benefiting from the market's susceptibility to ingenious rumours.

You can't blame them, either. What they're doing is quite legitimate, even though it might fall into the category of gaming. They're in the business of making a living out of other people's money, and when that becomes uncertain, they fall back to the secondary business of not losing their own money.

And it's not about oil, OK? It never was. It's all about futures. Someone (plural), somewhere, have (ugh) been trying hard to make as much money as they can from the oil market, long before it actually reaches the run-out point. Who could it be? Shrewd investors? Maybe. The suppliers? Quite likely. And here, I have a lot of sympathy for countries like Saudi Arabia, because all they have is oil. When they've sold all the oil they can get out from under their feet, what can they turn to? Selling sand? Camel-hair coats and rugs? Who can blame them for trying to build up a chunk of venture-capital for what comes after the well runs dry.

Or, and this was the startling thought that came to me while I was gardening, with jets screaming overhead beneath the low clouds and helicopters thudding monotonously backwards and forwards in the Blackmore Vale, perhaps this is a new kind of warfare. Let's call it Economic Guerilla Warfare. Perhaps Osama Bin Laden, and a few like-minded individuals, have decided that terrorism is too hit-and-miss, too risky, and above all, not able to really hurt the people they despise the most; the financiers and governments of the West. Perhaps, in the way that the Japanese tried to put a stranglehold on the computer printing market back in the early days of the Centronics interface, these individuals have decided that they will go into the futures business and beat their enemies at their own game. And perhaps they're winning.