There was an article here in the newspaper saying too that they expect oil to hit $200 per barrel. There are two reasons for this ...
1) Oil speculation - there is no real shortage, but every time there is any kind of conflict in the world (and try to find a day in the past century where there WASN'T some kind of international conflict!), the speculators drive the price up. No one is really going to do anything about this because the oil companies and governments are getting rich on it. Higher gas prices = higher profits for the oil companies and higher sales and mineral oil tax income for the gubment.
2) The weakening US dollar. Oil prices are handled in dollars, and the value of the dollar has dropped by more than 25% in the past year. Where the US$ used to be about 1.25 to the CHF, today it was 1.04 CHF and dropping. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Swiss Franc was even stronger, where $1 was 0.98 CHF.
IMHO, the dollar will remain weak until at least November. After that, it will all depend upon how the US presidential elections go. If J. McCain is elected, the dollar is done. It will drop even further, and the US economy will drop into a tailspin like in the 1920s.
If Clinton is elected, it's hard to tell what the dollar will do. Obama seems to be the "great hope" from an international perspective. If he is elected, I think that the dollar will recover some ground.
Again, my opinion. I don't want to discuss it, I'm just presenting it here for your reading pleasure.
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