I Told You The Price Of Crude Is Being Rigged

[marble falls]

27. Reserves are just that: reserves. They can only put down pressure on prices for months ...

... till they are pumped down and then restocking them puts pressure to raise prices again. The strategic reserves were meant to keep the old oil burning Navy at sea if oil was cut off to the US back when we were a net importing country. Now we are a net oil exporting nation, the largest oil exporter in the world for more than twenty years. The Saudis and Russians (#2 and #3 exporters) do about 2/3s each the oil we export.

The reserves were never meant to affect price, they were meant to muddle through a shortage. There is no shortage. There's plenty of oil if you want to pay the price. In a shortage prices go up and there's still not enough oil. There's plenty of oil right now. All this speculation has done is give US producer's and refiners the biggest and longest pay days they've ever had. It's a rigged market and you and I get no benefit from it.