>>BP has closed that feeder pipeline (thus the whole oil field) for an indefinite period of time yet all oil companies WILL REAP GREATER "PROFITS" AS A RESULT!!!!!!!!!!
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>The commodities business is weird.
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>For all my free-market enthusiasm, I have felt that there was something wrong with oil prices for a while. The report just confirms it for me.
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>>In any normal business enterprise, if you produce less you make less profit. But not in the oil business!
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>No, it's just as true in the Awl Bidness as well. You can't sell what can't be brought to market.

Except the oil business has one thing going for it that the widget business doesn't... the less supply they have/make the higher their profits go.
They learned this when they consolidated and shut down 'redundant' refineries. Suddenly there were periodic shortages where there were none before. So the price 'had to' go up. You know, free market, supply and demand and allthat stuff.

So you don't bring stuff to market and the price of the stuff you do bring to market goes way up. What would you do if you were the MBA running the company. I think I'd try to produce as little as possible (giving me longer time in the business) and publicize that I'm going to have trouble meeting demand. Then let the NYMX go to work.




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>>I still have a very hard time believing that the commodities traders on the New York Merchantile Exchange are not somehow in the pockets of the oil companies.
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>See Commodity Exchange Act. It would seem there are some pretty strict regulations prohibiting that, but I'm no lawyer. Most commodities traders have little to do with the production side of the goods they buy and sell.
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>(As an aside, it is interesting that onion futures are specifically prohibited - must be some interesting history behind that!)