Gurk!

Moming Zhou with the oil news:

Crude surges to above $120 for first time on supply concerns - MarketWatch: SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Crude oil futures surged nearly $4 Monday to above $120 a barrel for the first time on concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria and weakness in the U.S. dollar. Crude oil for June delivery soared $3.89 to an intraday high of $120.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in mid-morning trading, a new record high for a front-month contract. Nigeria's rebel group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said Sunday it was responsible for an attack on a Shell oil flow station in the south of the country, according to media reports.

Comments

[bigTom]

It's worse. Oil has closed out the week at $126 and change. Even Daniel Yergin at CERA, whose ridiculously optimistic, but widely believed reports the past few years bear some responsibility for our sleepwalking into this thing, is now predicting $150 by years end. It looks like the peak oil crisis is beginning. Until the world finds enough consumers who are willing to forgo consumption to balance out supply and demand, he price will just keep rising. Given all this BS about gas tax holidays, it looks like the full price will be paid to the mostly foreign oil field owners.

So who, other than the poorest of the poor, is volunteering (or involunteering, by dint of inability to pay) to cut their consumption? This is not going to be pretty. We need a crash course in learning to wring maximum efficiency from oil. But it has been impossible to generate any interest for this project until now. Or maybe not until the price doubles again?

[Tuco]

We can only hope that President Obama is up to the task of changing direction from the "oil president" with money and initiatives for energy alternatives to oil. I agree that we missed the starting gun on peak oil - by about eight years.

The American consumer also deserves blame for ignorance and arrogance when it comes to energy conservation. It's somebody else's problem - give me that Osama-Bin-Laden signature model SUV or pick-up truck, I simply *need* to drive the biggest gas guzzling vehicle I can find.

It wouldn't hurt for the government to get behind energy conservation initiatives on the home heating/cooling front either. Rebates for better windows and insulation upgrades, new R-value minimum standards for window and insulation on new homes, an energy efficiency rating for homes (with acutal testing during sale/resale of homes) much like we see for appliances, etc.

And here's a new concept: how about starting to build *smaller* homes that require less energy to heat and cool. The housing size opulence is an extension of the SUV size opulence that we can no longer reasonably maintain or justify here in the US. We need to be weaning ourselves from both gas guzzlers and the McMansion mentality.