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March 6, 2008
After flirting with $100 a barrel for a few weeks and then busting through a couple of weeks ago, crude oil prices now seem to be on a tear, going over $105 a barrel today.
These levels are simply incredible to anyone who spent anytime in the oil patch, as I did for the first three years of my professional life working for two leading oil industry newsletters and then helping to establish the energy desk at Reuters News Agency in New York.
We are now well beyond the all-time high of an inflation-adjusted $103.75 which was set back in 1980. The latest push is partly motivated by Wednesday's decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces 40 percent of the world's crude oil, not to increase production.
Other factors include an unexpected reduction in U.S. crude oil inventories reported by the Energy Department and speculators drawn by the falling dollar into a commodity priced in dollars.
Whatever the causes, these rising prices bode no good for the average mug on the street like you and me.
- Peter C.T. Elsworth
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 9:53 AM to commentary
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