Why does the price of oil increase if some expert says it MIGHT increase?

Question

The experts need to keep their mouths shut. Maybe they stand to gain from making dumb statements like "Oil is going to increase by $30.00 per barrel since Dictator Y scratched his nose." These guys are beginning to frustrate me. Xanthippe and I are having trouble feeding the kinds.

Answer 1

just remember, that for every speculator that stands to make money on the run up in oil, others will lose when the speculative margin falls off, which it will probably do, when people find out just how fast the free market will respond to America's objection to $5 a gallon gas.

electric cars are just around the corner.  Every home in america will have an electric or hybrid, depending on how far you have to drive every day.  they will also have a traditional long range fueled vehicle, either gasoline or hydrogen or hybrid.   car companies will rebound as it will become chic in all quarters to travel the farthest for the least cost.  kind of like how people used to talk a lot about what route you took to get to the party.

Answer 2

Forecasters are like weather people. They don't have to be right to stay employed. Most often the media must thrive and media does not thrive unless things are going sour.

Answer 3

Perhaps the experts were right, that the market conditions predicted the increase in prices, the expert was merely the messenger.

There are a lot of people who know what the trends in supply and demand are. Experts do not invent those numbers. But they could revert to telling only the suppliers of their conclusions, and leave us in the dark. There is a value to that, in that consumers will not then go out and fill the tank because there may be a little shortage.

However, if shortage is the norm, people will get into the habit of filling up, maintaining the full tank.

Prices are not going up because of experts saying they will, even though on a sequence of events basis we might assume that to be the case. Rather, the conditions that cause prices to rise are evident before the price rises.

Somebody was sure to spill the beans, whether it be an expert or otherwise.

Answer 4

Oil companies are making record profits.

if you look at the oil companies as a different publicly traded company, say 'GMC, or Ford" they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. It is a free market and is going to go up and down with speculation.

If we want the price of gas to go down, it is simple fix. As a whole americans need to change their lifestyles and not drive as much and not buy as much oil. then the price will go down.

The demand for it is making it go up.

Answer 5

These experts don't necessarily drive the price.  They are market analysts.  They take information from the markets and from what is going on in the world in general and try to estimate how the market will react.  They are basically trying to predict the future.  I doubt that they have much to gain, but they can lose their credibility if their predictions are wrong.

All that said, analysts could possibly drive the price by causing panic or apathy.  It really depends on how most consumers interpret these predictions.