Topic: Just commodities

[Libertas]

Correct CO, and yes Pan, if a new field was discovered it would send a positive signal to the market based upon predicted daily rate, when it gets tapped and the actual rate of flow is established, then you would see the market adjust up or down from the preliminary daily estimate, so if it is producing more than expected it could cause another increase in available supply.

This availability vs access thing is what really drives me nucking futs!  We know there is a buttload of oil under the north slope, but eco-nazi's and Leftists at large successfully crapped out enough lies to make drilling all but impossible there, and until that changes those reserves will never be allowed to have their positive impact felt on the world market.  Ditto for other areas and offshore sites.  We have more oil underground than the fricken Saudi's, but we are not allowed by the government to go after it!  There is nothing more stupid, ignorant and shortsighted than this!

[charlesoakwood]

I'm compelled to say again: The oil pressure is so high in San Francisco Bay that the earth expels ... well, I wanted to quote the sum however, it seems to be one of those disappeared  quotients from the web.  Researched two gubment pdfs about Santa Barbara seepage and the words: barrel, barrels, gallons, and pounds did not appear one time in either one of them.

Not to worry, friends, I found a recent article from the Daily Caller from which I bring a snippet.

[blockquote]Link
Currently, all oil drilling off the coast of California takes place on Platform Holly, located 12 miles from Santa Barbara. The South Ellwood offshore field is home to over a billion barrels of oil, according to the Department of Energy. These reserves expel [seep] about 86,000 barrels of oil into the ocean each year.

To put the effects of the seep in context, the Dos Cuadras oil spill put roughly the same amount of oil into the ocean in 1969 and covered over 35 miles of beachfront. The oil seep has recently brought environmentalist groups to the negotiating table in hopes that drilling will reduce its impact on wildlife.

Studies show that deep-water drilling has significantly reduced the natural seepage of oil around Platform Holly.[/blockquote]


Note: The South Ellwood field is only one of many established fields in the Santa Barbara Bay area.

[Pandora]

As I understand it, nature-made tar balls have been washing up Louisiana's shores for a long time as well.  It's natural!  It's organic!  I thought the Left really liked natural and organic; turns out they're very picky about icky oil:

Repeat this tired old adage that somehow sticking to oil is in any way a good idea as much as you like. It still won't even begin to make it right for all kinds of reasons. We'll bear with it until a proven technology comes out, but saying that its a viable long term alternative is simple stupidity. We don't have enough of it to supply ourselves, we don't have the refineries to do something with it, we are paying money to potential terrorist supporters to get it, we can't control the price of it, it has numerous environmental consequences both in getting it, transporting it and using it, its carcinogenic in numerous forms and its a finite resource to begin with.

If you want to call the sky green, call the sky green. The rest of us will smile and nod until you shut up about it.

[Libertas]

I hate these articles, so full of it!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-29/oil-trades-near-one-week-low-on-stockpile-gain-talk-of-release.html

US Stockpiles up 7.1m barrels and the price drops 2.3% over 2 days?  Umm, the US consumes about 18m barrels per day, so there is more going on than we are seeing.  I am thinking the recent runnup was due more to psychological reasons (Iran tensions) than anything and some of that panic may have been overstated and prices are now seeking a new support level.

[ToddF]

WTI $105.25
Gas $3.42

Doesn't look down to me. 

[Libertas]

Depends where you start.

http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=CL&p=w1

[Libertas]

Manipulation in the gold market, can be a bit much to read, but the e-mails toward the end of the embedded report are quite interesting!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/paul-mylchreest-presents-various-visual-case-studies-gold-price-manipulation

Drive it down and gobble it up.  Big PTB's know what is coming and are loading up!

[charlesoakwood]

here are some other facts that we have in our possession:
    

• The quantity of money is managed
• The price of money is managed (via interest rates)
  
•  Because interest rates are being managed (mangled?) to near zero, it means risk
    tolerances and preferences are being managed towards taking on higher risk
• The price of oil is openly managed, with strategic releases from time to time
• The price of food and energy are managed via subsidies, both direct and hidden
• Official statistics (e.g., GDP. inflation, employment) are heavily biased, massaged, and managed to tell a rosy story vs. a more realistic version, which means that perceptions are managed

Out of all these efforts, certainly the one with the most dramatic impact is the management of the price of money.

 

ETA: Here is the Thunder Road, Gold Price and the Monetary System since 5-05-2011
pdf address:
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/action/media/downloadFile?media_fileid=1718

[charlesoakwood]

As long as this illusion prevails, the Anglo/US/Euro political and financial elite (for their personal accounts), Chinese and Russian central banks, Arab royals, Asian billionaires, Indian farmers, tin  pot  “stackers”  and  others  stay  focused  on  “squirreling  away”  physical metal. An  almost unknown, except to a few, “sage” of the gold market once forecast (I’m paraphrasing but it is close enough) that:

“Physical gold will need only to be ‘priced’ once during this lifetime and that will be more than enough.”

Beneath the surface and behind the scenes, this process is playing out irrespective of the current “hybrid price” on traders’ screens. The  latter  is  just being used to make the financial system look better than it really is. You know what they say about working out who the sucker is in a game of poker?

ETA: Gresham’s Law Squared - gearing up for Game Over - ThunderRoadReport-02-24-2011
  http://www.gata.org/files/ThunderRoadReport-02-24-2011.pdf

[Libertas]

Damn good links CO! 

I guess the extemely slow-walking of COMEX deliveries in large purchases doesn't surprise me, the smaller investor can still get physical in the smaller sizes, but the appetite of nations and the wealthy for PM's is making larger quantities harder to get.  I susally go through APMEX and have had good luck with them.  Everytime silver drops I put another order in.  We're in the mid 32's right now, not a bad time to buy.  Once the currency debasement pops, PM's could go stratospheric.

The PDF in the post above is an excellent primer to give to anyone wanting to understand the PM market!

And there is more debasement on the horizon!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gold-rises-and-silver-surges-q1-2012-fiat-currency-devaluation-continues

Hi Ho Silver!

[charlesoakwood]

Paraphrasing Weisshaupt, spend that fiat money.

[Libertas]

No kidding!  The debasement continues unabated!!!  Buy, stash, and don't forget the unfortunate boating accident!

[charlesoakwood]

That's for sure and it could be any future necessity, Pan suggested tires.  I bought
tires and gallons of oil etc. It's not just gas that's already doubled in price.
There are areas that are booming in the face of this adversity and others who are
planning on increase.

We need the politicians and bureaucrats and regulators to get out of the way, that's all.  All this steel down there, is what, about thirty percent of what demand would be if drillers were set free. How many more drivers, riggers, food and lodging services, fuel stations, new subdivisions, schools, families, would that create and nourish?

[blockquote] Port of Houston Authority reports 119 percent increase in steel imports

Steel imports at the Port of Houston soared by 329,000 tons in February compared with the previous month, an increase of more than 140 percent. For the year, steel imports stand at 564,000 tons, a 119 percent increase over the same period in 2011.

"You can attribute the tonnage primarily to the shale plays that are occurring in the United States for the drilling for gas," Ricky Kunz, Port of Houston Authority's vice president for trade development, said in an interview with KUHF Houston public radio.[/blockquote]

and

                             
Chinese are prepping for future demand our leaders are prepping for their next photo op. More powder for Senator Mitchell, over here and don't forget the rouge
[blockquote]Chinese Steelmaker Orders Twin-ladle Furnace

Zhangjiagang Hongchang Plate Co. has awarded Siemens VAI Metals Technologies an order to supply two twin-ladle furnaces for its new converter steelworks. Both facilities are scheduled for commissioning in spring 2013.

Each of the twin-ladle furnaces has a capacity of 180 tonnes, and will be installed in the new Zhangjiagang Hongchang converter steelworks in the city of Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu Province.

Siemens is supplying key mechanical and electrical components as well. These include current conducting electrode arms together with the high-current busbar system and hydraulic system. Siemens is also responsible for engineering, installation and commissioning, the company said in a statement.

... The company produces about 30 million tonnes of raw steel each year. [/blockquote]

[trapeze]

LINK

Today, the Middle East is in the news daily — we hear of strife in Syria, in Iran, in Israel and Palestine. Ten or 20 years from now, conflicts in the Middle East will count for less in the world’s scheme of things, just as the daily conflicts that now occur in Africa get short shrift, despite Africa’s far greater loss of life. Twenty years from now, the Middle East could be about as important as it was at the turn of the previous century — before its oil was discovered — which was not very important at all.

The Middle East will attract scant attention in future, not because the region will have run out of oil — it will have found much more — but because the rest of the world will also be awash in oil. As supplies increase, oil depreciates in price, as does the political value of its purveyors.

The future.

Although shale oil technology is still in its infancy, much of the U.S. shale oil can be developed inexpensively, at a cost comparable to the US$50 to US$60 per barrel cost of tar sands, which has itself been dropping. The trend down in shale oil costs is likely to continue over the coming years. Israel, which has some 250-billion barrels in one basin near Jerusalem alone, an amount comparable to Saudi Arabia’s reserves, expects to develop its oil at a cost of US$35 to US$40 per barrel. Should the world price of oil drop to this level — which happens to be the average price over the last two decades — the halving in oil prices will have mirrored that of natural gas. In the process, today’s Middle East energy exporters will have been bankrupted and their autocrats ousted.

Saudi Arabia, for example, now depends on petroleum for 80% of its budget, 45% of its GDP and 90% of its export earnings. A dramatic decrease in oil revenues would render the next generation of Saudi rulers incapable of maintaining the lavish payments needed to appease the Saudi clerics, let alone the social welfare payments that have kept the Saudi populace at bay, such as the US$130-billion in instant benefits conferred upon Saudi citizens last year to tamp down dissent during the Arab Spring. This artificial country, carved out of the Ottoman Empire after World War I by the British and given to the Saudi clan, would then likely break up, to once again be ruled along tribal lines. But few in the West would then take much notice.

[Libertas]

Indeed, the Saudi's and other oil kingdoms are on a clock, and I see no ability to transition to a new economy, the region will revert back to nomadic times, and whoever hangs out there is going to be off little consequence to the rest of the world.

Now, if we can only end the progressive reign of ignorance here at home, we could really see a revitalized America take off.

[charlesoakwood]

On spending fiat money:  Earlier this year I priced a set of 3 throw rugs for $315.00 finally deciding to purchase them I pasted the saved link into the browser and what came up was, a single, the largest rug priced at the exact earlier price of the set.  Curious I searched for the set and found it... the exact same set for $529.00.  During this search it was also discovered that many other items researched at the same time as the rugs were "out of stock". Upon contacting a human discovered that they will not be receiving any more of those items.

It appears today's cost of the item to the merchandiser is above what it can be sold for at a profit.  This is a sign of the beginning of a vicious cycle. What is it when you oscillate between escalating inflation and a depressed market?
 
[blockquote]
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Handwerger/20120404.html
We may be witnessing a false illusion that the economy has bottomed and further QE is unnecessary yet we see golden swans on the horizon.

These banks are still holding 1.5 million foreclosed homes that are still unsold.  We could see many foreclosure sales over the next few months, where we could see an upswing in asset sales by 25%.  This is why we recently saw Bernanke hint at additional accommodation to continue supporting a moribund economy.  We may be under the optical illusion America is doing fantastic and that the U.S. dollar will rebound.[/blockquote]
or
[blockquote]
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Nadler/20120404.html
Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao projects that on the technical side of things in gold, the yellow metal has the potential to fall to the $1,392 per ounce level over the next 90 days. That figure represents the 100% Fibonacci projection level while the $1,447 mark represents the 38.3% Fibonacci retracement of the rise from $680 to $1920. The sub-$1,400 gold price target –according to Wang Tao-will be “confirmed when gold falls below the March 22 low of $1,627.68 per ounce.
[/blockquote]
and
[blockquote]
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Aden/20120326.html   By Mary Anne & Pamela Aden,
-- Mary Anne & Pamela Aden are well known analysts and editors of The Aden Forecast, a market newsletter named 2010 Letter of the Year by MarketWatch,[/blockquote]

                                                                                                                     8135

[Libertas]

Yeah, if gold dips below $1300 and silver below $25 you can bet your bottom dollar I am going to load up on more physical!

[Libertas]

http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=GC&p=m5

Did Turbo Timmy flip the hyperdrive switch on the printing presses again?

[charlesoakwood]

I watch those charts, it's always boom one way or the other, and try to find out
who said what at that specific time.  I guess if one could RSS that he could "ride
the wave, baby".

[charlesoakwood]

http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/04/09/obama-us-brazil_live_s300x199.jpg?9095da026e6820e57b439d06d098b7b108fa2f86

"What could Obama learn from Brazil President Dilma Rousseff?" The optimistic answer is: hopefully not much.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/9/obamas-brazilian-model/

And she lectured him on QE and threatened him with a BRIC.
Look at that angry puss. Whuff