Oil Prices On the Rise Yet Again
Today, oil prices rose to the highest price that anyone has seen in the past 33 weeks. This happened as a terrorist plot was discovered and foiled. The plan was aimed to ruin many important petroleum facilities. Of course, had this happened this would have interrupted the flow of oil throughout the world. With this event, gas prices could rise to close to $3 per gallon. This was the record was set after the Gulf of Mexico was hit by Hurricane Katrina.
If the terrorist plot had not been foiled, gas prices could have risen to between $5 and $8 per gallon. Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, said that it would have been like “Armageddon for the oil industry.” As it is, by the close of trading today, oil rose $1.40 coming in at $66.46, which is the highest price since September 7th when oil rose to $67.32.
Jason Schenker, a Wachovia enconomist, says that this riise in prices does not have anything to do with what happened in Saudi Arabia. Instead, he said that it has more to do with the fact that gasoline is made from oil and the demand for gasoline is at its peak throughout the summer because that is the busiest driving time of the year.
Regardless of what is driving this rise in gasoline prices, demand is up 2.5% on average during the 4 weeks of April.