Crunch Time

Libyan Oil Minister Fathi bin Shatwan said Wednesday that news that Iraq's oil exports would flat-line at a low 1.5 million barrels a day for the rest of the year were a shock and made the supply-demand balance far more critical.Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said early Wednesday that the country's oil exports in the fourth quarter of this year would be virtually unchanged over its current 1.5 million barrels a day.Shatwan told Dow Jones Newswires: "That's an extra 300,000 barrels a day less than we were expecting. It makes the situation even more critical."

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Raise Gas Taxes NOW...(or, Justifying Demand Destruction)

That means, by this way of looking at the data, we're not actually at 63% of the 1981 high in 2005 as I discussed in an earlier post. Instead, with this more valid data, we're at 76% of the 1981 price! That means the call for alarm should be even greater than it was in my earlier post. The data tell the story. Find some method of demand destruction. Now.

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