Perhaps the most egregious media misstatement was from the US News link:

“Oil slipped below $120 at one point today and now overall is down nearly 20 percent from its July high of near $150…..... the drop had everything to do with reports this weekend that MIT chemist Daniel Nocera seems to have discovered a cheap—by a factor of 1,000—and easy way to separate hydrogen from water.”

This report either doesn't understand energy timelines, futures markets, or neither. Futures markets are about current supply. Even were this not the case and something commercial were to come from this MIT development, to SCALE it would require MORE oil investment before we would see a pay off, requiring higher demand for oil in the coming years, not less, ergo higher futures prices.

Short term futures markets have been down because of commodity liquidations and producer hedging. News such as this had nothing at all to do with it..

I don't get this need to try and analyze daily fluctuations of these markets.

You might as well go to the track and bet on the ponies.

Its not that we are trying to predict these fluctuations to make money (though certainly many do). But there seems to be a continual flood of rationalizations of why oil has gone from $10 to $120 in under 9 years due to everything except the real reasons, i.e. that population and demand are increasing, and geology and flow rates are becoming limited. If people acknowledge this backdrop, then each day to day movement can have its own players and story while policymakers address the looming crises. But the day to day players seem to be telling policymakers what the story is, and that's not helping.

Everyone wants the good times to roll, again. HA!

I told a friend of mine on the west coast, "Gas has gone down a quarter, I guess the SUV's will make a roaring comeback ... "

Here's from the Financial Times, July 30; (Javier Blas): “After years of strong growth, liquidity in commodities futures markets, particularly crude oil, is falling abruptly as the credit crunch finally hits leveraging in the sector and contributes to a sharp increase in price volatility. The number of outstanding contracts - known as open interest in industry jargon - in key US commodities markets has fallen 5.5% since March and is now at its lowest level since January, according to Barclays… In oil, open interest has fallen to its lowest in more than a year and a half. Analysts and traders say the reduction in liquidity has been brought about by financial institutions deleveraging - particularly among cash-squeezed Wall Street banks…”

"Markets will fluctuate." J. P. Morgan.

Worse than that the same clowns who are shooting their wads in the energy commodities casinos are the ones who are supposedly investing in new energy technology.

Over the weekend I ran into a friend of a friend who had a supposedly decently viable tidal power company. I say had, because he's having to shut up shop just as he was trying to scale up to a commercial demonstrator because his venture capital firm decided it could get better ROI with the huge swings of the last few months on futures.

Once again I say: "The market didn't put a man on the moon - not while it could play the crack spread instead"

James Pethokoukis's oil price claims about the Nocera anode are little different from those of the Republican party regarding their offshore drilling rhetoric. Both can be explained by what B. F. Skinner discovered regarding superstitious behaviour in experiments on pigeons. A related experiment was conducted on humans by Derren Brown and absolutely no one suspected their behaviour had no bearing on the outcome.

Exactly. Any breakthroughs in energy efficiency would result in more productivity, increased GDP, increased incomes, etc. All these would drive the cost of oil through the roof. Jevon's Paradox will ensure that oil is going to be expensive proportionally to whatever technological breakthroughs we can come up with. Even if we had a zero point generator, oil demand would shoot through the roof because zero point generators would ignite a building spree unlike anything the world has ever seen. (Including China!) Even if we had free energy, we'd still need all the oil in the world just to build an infrastructure that could make use of free energy. That was a pretty grim realization for me...

All hail Jevons paradox ! And indeed, the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate !