Very interesting article in the Telegraph about real concerns over OPEC's (primarily Saudi) ability (or not) to control spikes in the oil market through increasing supply.

Paints a really worrying picture about near-term economic instability, and mid-term energy supply security that could make interest rate speculation seem like fiddling while Rome burns.

Basically, the West has been backing the wrong guys. The long-term prognosis for the Middle East almost certainly will not be the stable oil source controlled by the House of Saud that Western foreign and energy policy depended on.

Sobering.

We've only got ourselves (well the US and other governments) to blame. They printed lots of money and gave it to banks etc who then speculated in food and other commodities. Food inflation in Tunisia, Egypt etc is just a symptom of that. Hungry people tend to riot a bit.

We are a couple of years into a depression that will last until the 2020's because we don't want to actually have to do any work to pay our debts. If the banks had been told to piss off then none of this would have happened.

oh well.

Was that a play on words?
(Oil Well).

Oh dear!

Well I'm off to panic buy Marmite, good cheese and Robinsons squash.

The price of oil won't help but I think there are more fundamental problems.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/c...ry/4od#3170212

Can't open the link unfortunately. (TV sites blocked!)

The oilsands guys must think Christmas has come early.

If you have access/can open BBC iPlayer you can now access Channel 4oD from there, supposedly.

Time to a get a new bike.

From Canada you would need to use a VPN account. I thought you were back in the UK though?

There are a few short interview clips here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...-the-past.html

No, I'm working (ahem!) up here in the oilsands, and going back to the UK on my time off.

For those pre metric types.......

The average price of a gallon of petrol hit £6 in the UK this week !!!!!!

Some have said that £10 a gallon is not very far away

Just be thankful your car doens't run on printer ink Price of printer ink per gallon

On the issue of petrol, there is apparently a planned day of protest in Saudi Arabia coming up tomorrow. I'm pretty worried about it all - if it kicks off there is going to be some serious hikes in prices, and people will be dreaming of the days they were paying $1.30.

Hopefully it all blows over peacefully.