>>Jim,
>>
>>Explain to me this, please. I have heard a couple of days ago on the news that the price for heating gas will go up by about 20% this year. And the news report stated that we get (I am in New England) natural gas mostly from Canada. Who sets the price for heating gas?
>>
>
>Buyers and sellers set the price. There is also an openly traded futures market, where people agree to buy or sell a commodity at a given price, at some point in time in the future. Expectations of supply an demand in the future affect the price at which someone is willing to buy or sell a given futures contract.
>
>So the price is not just "set", so to speak. If someone says I'm willing to pay $20, and someone else says I'll sell it for $20, then the deal is done, and the price at that point in time is $20.
Steve,

That's the way it's SUPPOSED to work.
It looks to me suspiciously like there's actually something ELSE at work here, nicely disguised as "supply and demand" doing its magic.
It LOOKS like the "buyers and sellers" you refer to are one and the same OR that the sellers know they have the buyers 'over a barrel' (pun intended) and are settign unrealistic prices.
Sure looks very similar to what happened in CA 2 years back.

Do you REALLY believe that the "free market" is actually working as designed? IF it is then is it reasonable to conclude that the real root of the problem is that Iraq1 oil was far more important to world supply than we all were led to believe, meaning that President Bush's war is the real source of higher oil prices?

Something simply ain't right in the whole scene.

cheers