Suitably Flip

If Oil Falls In the Futures Market, Does It Make a Front Page

Why do I keep posting about oil prices' steady decline?  This obviously isn't particularly newsworthy if it's not getting appreciable news coverage.

Then again, think back to 5 months ago (the last time crude oil futures were this low).  In the late spring and early summer, when oil went on its steady climb, don't you recall a bit torrent of news coverage and political posturing about Big Oil's evil pricing conspiracies and constant wailing for "windfall profit" taxes to put these gluttonous, collusive fat cats in their place?

Unfortunately for oil company assailants, the indominable might of the invisible hand is proving, as ever, that commodity prices are driven by supply, demand, and market speculation thereabout.

The deafening media silence over crude's sustained decline over the last month has spoken volumes about the relative appetite for emotive, hand-wringing indignation over rational reliance on well-overseen free market forces.

For posterity (and to plug this gaping maw in the media's ongoing undercoverage of this dramatic decline) let's reflect on this sustained pullback in light sweet crude oil futures over the last 22 trading sessions.

To recap, key reasons for this decline are a drastic reduction in hurricane forecasts throughout the 2006 season, the end of the summer driving season, an unexpected recent buildup in domestic oil supplies, a presumption that OPEC (the actual, non-American collusive oil cartel that can and does manipulate prices) will agree to maintain current output levels at next week's meeting, and this week's discovery of a simply enormous oil field in the Gulf of Mexico (the second largest ever discovered by this country).

Good, good, good.  Newsworthy, newsworthy, newsworthy.  As long as the media is ignoring it in favor of more hand-wringingly palatable pursuits, rest assured this and other inconveniently happy news will continue grace this page.

Source data:  Department of Energy

Previously:
Oil's Big, Big End of Summer Clearance Sale
Walker Ridge - Get Ready To Love These Words
Crude Watch
Coming In November: Falling Oil, Economic Bliss, Some Elections
Had Enough, Crude?  Yeah, You Stay Down.
Oil Tanks Again

Comments

If Oil Falls In the Futures Market, Does It Make a Front Page

Why do I keep posting about oil prices' steady decline?  This obviously isn't particularly newsworthy if it's not getting appreciable news coverage.

Then again, think back to 5 months ago (the last time crude oil futures were this low).  In the late spring and early summer, when oil went on its steady climb, don't you recall a bit torrent of news coverage and political posturing about Big Oil's evil pricing conspiracies and constant wailing for "windfall profit" taxes to put these gluttonous, collusive fat cats in their place?

Unfortunately for oil company assailants, the indominable might of the invisible hand is proving, as ever, that commodity prices are driven by supply, demand, and market speculation thereabout.

The deafening media silence over crude's sustained decline over the last month has spoken volumes about the relative appetite for emotive, hand-wringing indignation over rational reliance on well-overseen free market forces.

For posterity (and to plug this gaping maw in the media's ongoing undercoverage of this dramatic decline) let's reflect on this sustained pullback in light sweet crude oil futures over the last 22 trading sessions.

To recap, key reasons for this decline are a drastic reduction in hurricane forecasts throughout the 2006 season, the end of the summer driving season, an unexpected recent buildup in domestic oil supplies, a presumption that OPEC (the actual, non-American collusive oil cartel that can and does manipulate prices) will agree to maintain current output levels at next week's meeting, and this week's discovery of a simply enormous oil field in the Gulf of Mexico (the second largest ever discovered by this country).

Good, good, good.  Newsworthy, newsworthy, newsworthy.  As long as the media is ignoring it in favor of more hand-wringingly palatable pursuits, rest assured this and other inconveniently happy news will continue grace this page.

Source data:  Department of Energy

Previously:
Oil's Big, Big End of Summer Clearance Sale
Walker Ridge - Get Ready To Love These Words
Crude Watch
Coming In November: Falling Oil, Economic Bliss, Some Elections
Had Enough, Crude?  Yeah, You Stay Down.
Oil Tanks Again