Ah, the pleasures of a slight misreading of a news headline.
“Do not panic-buy petrol, says PM”
or is it
“Do not panic; buy petrol, says PM”
From $100 a barrel at the start of the year to around $139 this week, the “Australian motorist” screaming blue murder at the government that “someone ought to do something” as petrol prices rise from $1.33 a litre to $1.66 over the same period. My, my, even some of the Americans are starting to notice that their god-given right to drive a big truck is costing them a lot of money. Riots in Nepal, Indonesia and elsewhere as the price goes up, strikes by truck drivers and fisherman in assorted parts of Europe. Um, what do they want to have happen, a government mandated low price? I really can’t see that having any workable effect.
There seem to be two opposing views to the source of the price rises; one is that its good ‘ol “supply and demand”, as two billion Chinese and Indians haul their economies into the first world, they want resources… lots of resources. Lots of demand and a finite amount of oil. OPEC responds by putting up the price. The other point of view seems to be that it is all completely artificial and driven by speculators, that the “real” price should be around $60-$70US a barrel and that it’ll all come down to that in a year… two at the most….
Hmmm, a bit of the latter and a lot of the former I suspect. If I knew then I’d be very rich, but I’m not very rich so I guess we can infer that I don’t know. Throw into the mix the elephants in the room of peak oil and global warming, together with appease-the-public governments with two-year maximum attention spans. Interesting times…. I’ll just have to watch, live and learn.
