California Conservative

The AP is reporting that oil prices continue dropping at a rapid pace:

Oil prices fell Wednesday after the government reported swelling inventories of gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuel. Crude oil stockpiles fell for the fourth straight week, according to a weekly inventory report by the Energy Information Administration. But inventories of refined products grew faster than market analysts had expected, pressuring prices lower.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery dropped $1.46 to $54.18 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after sinking to $53.89 in earlier trading. The contract touched $53.88 on Tuesday, a level not seen since June 13, 2005.

Oil prices have fallen by nearly a third since peaking at $78.40 last July and are down 9 percent so far this year.

As I reported here, the year started with crude at $61.05. It’s now at $53.89, a drop of $7.16 or almost 12 percent. I just was out shopping and saw that gas prices have now dropped to $2.07 a gallon in St. Cloud, which tells me that gas is below $2 a gallon in the Twin Cities.

Expect prices to continue dropping because we still have unseasonably mild weather here and because people have changed their driving habits to conserve.

The continuing moral of this story: MARKETS WORK!!! (If you keep socialists from meddling with them.)

Technorati Tags: Crude Oil, Markets, Conservation

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.