Buy a gas station for the tanks.

Fill 'em up out of a tanker farm.

You can't buy futures cheaper than actuals now.

Most brokers can put investments into the commodity futures market. Here is a link to an online commodities specialist.

http://www.ibdirect.com/ (there are many companies of this type)

They provide a piece of software that allows you to order your own trades whenever you want. To enter the oil futures market you need to establish an account and deposit sufficient cash to meet the margin requirements. At the moment a contract for 1000 barrels of oil for future delivery requires an initial margin of $12,488. Further if the market moves against you then you will have to deposit more money so that you are always a minimum of $9,250 above what would be required to cash out of the contract. If the market moves against you and you fall below this cushion the broker will sell your contract to cover themselves.

On the other hand if the market moves in your favor you can take out part of your profit before the expiration of the contract. As an example. In jan the contract for delivery of 1000B of oil in dec 2015 was about $100/B if you had bought the contract then (i.e. you were long or a buyer) you would have had to put down about $10,000 (the margin requirement was lower then). Right now that contract sells for about $140 so you would have made $40,000. If you were confident that the contract would not go down again you could take out your profit (actually just about $38000) since the margin requirement has increased since then.

All this being said IMO short term (day to day or hour to hour) trading in commodities is a game for pros. They have much more and more current knowledge than you have and you will be unlikely to beat them at that.

On the other hand the price for the dec 2015 is currently $140 which says to me that the pros have not bought into peak oil, they are pricing the far future contract off the current price. If you believe oil will go up this seems a good investment IMO.

This is called speculating but I see it as the same thing Southwest Airlines is doing. I will need oil based products in 2015 and fear they will be much more expensive. By buying a contract for delivery at essentially today's price I am assured that if there is a major runup in price my profit will cover the added cost of those products.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=oilb.l
http://www.etfsecurities.com/

Is a Brent oil derivative. Listed on LSE. Any stock broker can buy this for you. Can also be traded electronically on the likes of Yahoo.

This is always based on the front month contract and at contract expiry it rolls into the next month.

The oil apparently does exist and is "husbanded" by Shell - theoretically. There is also an oilw contract based on westexas.

DBO is an excellent product for long-term investing in oil futures. They own actual oil futures, but instead of rolling over the front month contract every month (and getting murdered by traders on the specified roll-over day), they have a formula for deciding the most advantageous month's contract to buy when they must roll over a contract. I believe they will buy any contract up to a year out.

When the market is in contango, as it is right now, you don't want to be rolling over contracts every single month, as you would do with USO.

USL is from the people behind USO, and is set up to do the same kind of thing as DBO.

These are also good for people who want to invest in oil, but are worried about things like windfall-profits taxes. It's a pure bet on the price of oil

We're currently in a wonderful dip for buying.

Disclosure: I own these for my own accounts and for the accounts of family members and friends.

Investing in oil futures?
Doesn't that exacerbate the problem for everyone else price wise - including the poorer nations?
I mean, investors are the one's who got us in this economic farrago in the first place.
God forbid someone might have to actually work for a living.