Peruse the Price of Oil blogs related to Big Oil Profits and Oil Price.

Check out this recent report that documents price gouging by Big Oil in the US.

The favorite topic du jour in DC these days is the price of gas - and this being DC - the blame game around it. Some talk about the lack of supply - and says the solution lies in relaxing green refinery rules and opening up ANWR. Others blame corporate profiteering and Bush administration opposition to demand reduction (a perspective that we share). Both sides talk about peak oil in hushed tones.

Nobody is talking about the war.

According to Daniel Yergin’s industry funded Cambridge Energy Research Associates there is a “slow motion supply shock” causing an “aggregate disruption” in the global oil market.
They break it down as:

• Iraq – 900,000 bd below prewar levels
• Nigeria – 530,000 bd shut-in by insurgents
• Venezuela – 400,000 bd below pre-2002-2003 strike levels
• U.S. Gulf of Mexico – 330,000 bd less than before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Thats 41% due to Iraq, for those keeping score. Nigeria can also be attributed to the now 16 year struggle for self-determination and conflict over resource control in the Delta. Thats two-thirds of the supply disruption - and by extension some comparable percentage of gas price increase - down to war. Lets call Venezuela resource nationalism (or decades of American imperial behavior in Latin America coming home to roost - er, thats war again…), and chalk the lost Gulf production up to global warming.
CERA is about as establishment as energy analysts get. Time to connect the dots.