The press can be blamed for sensationalizing the news, and trying to instill fears among the gas-buying public, too. And they do, uh, a good (for lack of better words) job at that. (Say what!?)

And a good deal of the rising in crude oil cost comes from that fear!

I had to make a correction on my post. I meant to say "gas-buying" public (not gay-buying). Otherwise, PN would have asked "what does have to with ...... "?

The press can be so very liberal. You would think that they would assign the blame to the present administration for the gas price inflation.

The fear should be domestic exploration.

The fear is GM, American Airlines, Delta, FedEx, Big Brown and others going tits up in the ditch as private haulers of groceries park their trucks and go broke while the government hides inflation of gas and food from their assessment.

As long as we can keep the beligerence down, crude prices will continue to drop. They did again today. This is not a coincidence.
my point earlier is that more cost needs to be put on the speculators if they wish to stay in this field. I played around in this investment area when I was a little younger; but decided a was a little too volatile for my liking. If nothing has changed since then; it takes only 1% of a contract amount to secure a trade. I just think this needs to be increased to 25% to better collateralize the deal.

Belligerence, strikes and weather have a day to day impact on futures trading.
There is probably a little, and maybe a lot of fluff in the speculated price of oil but that is true of gold and other commodities. As we reach peak oil, and no one is certain when that will happen, oil becomes more and more held like gold. In the past it was held like corn or wheat where flood or drought were the price movers but now it is moving toward an annual diminishing resource. Once a commodity enters the endangered species list its value goes up especially if the commodity remains or is increasing in demand.

Europe and the US are taking alternatives to oil but with differing results like world hunger. Electricity is the easiest to replace with an alternative but world demand for energy to supply existing and growing fleets of aircraft and automobiles demand oil.

If peak oil is actually here now or in the next five to seven years speculation will be the only thing that will control prices jumping dollars a day verses pennies a day. I think it is better to allow speculation to operate freely than risk radical changes in the marketplace because of too tight controls.