Sudden Surprise Drop in Oil Supplies Reported by US Government, Leads to Another Price Rise. Why Would They Lie About This? See the Chart.

 Where oh where has our light sweet crude gone?  Oh where or where could it be? BTW, though Bloomberg hadn't noticed a change in gas prices at the time they published their report, I noticed local prices went up $.08 yesterday.

Bloomberg reports in "Oil Is Little Changed After Reaching Record on Drop in Supplies":

Oil was little changed in New York after touching a record $112.21 a barrel yesterday following an unexpected decline in U.S. crude supplies.
The 3.1 million-barrel drop in crude-oil stockpiles reported by the Energy Department sent the price up as much as 3.4 percent yesterday. Gasoline futures jumped as much as 2.6 percent to their highest ever.
``There is a risk premium being priced into the market with regard to the future availability of crude oil,'' Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. ``This is a market that's being driven by speculation as much as it is by the fundamentals.'' 

 
As striking truckers have noted, the federal government continues to buy up oil and stock pile it for a future emergency, creating even more of an emergency  now and ignoring it.  At least the Clinton administration used to draw out reserved oil when prices for fuel or heating got high which tended to stop further price hikes.  But the Bush administratration never saw oil product price hikes they didn't like.  And now we get announcements that some of the oil supply just isn't there anymore.  What a field day for the speculators! 

Big Oil will have a lot more money to put into those campaign donations this year which, unlike those of most industries, still heavily favor Republicans.  Remind your friends and family, that if they vote Republican, they are voting for more high gas prices so Big Oil can flood Republican coffers. 

As reported by the Center for Responsive Politics* at Open Secrets the Oil and Gas Industry, alone among the not highly political ones has not moderated it's donations to near 50-50 nor favors Democrats this year. (Telecoms didn't moderate much either, but they weren't as unbalanced as Big Oil is) .  On the right, above, you probably saw a chart showing donations from non-overtly political industries in 2000 and 2008 so you can see why the Republican administration suddenly reporting less oil supply might be a little suspicious.  (Keep in mind that the Bush administration has been caught fudging job loss and unemployment numbers and changing historical figures on the savings rate, and is suspected by businessmen and economists of lying about the inflation rate for years).

BTW, the current presidential candidate receiving the most Oil and Gas industry money is John McCain followed by Hillary Clinton.

* I'm sorry I've had the wrong name up for days.  During the week I did try to go back and check on it, but had trouble finding the exact words and therefore went by memory which is not always a good idea.  When the weekend finally arrived, I had forgotten about the post that took me a couple of days to complete since such a backlog of important news had built up.  The CRP does note that it is okay to use their information as long as they get credit.  Therefore I figured I'd better get back and make sure the credit is accurate.  Return to * above