forbes.com: Give Oil a Future
William Baldwin
05.19.08
The energy market is misbehaving. See the story by Christopher Helman, explaining the mystifying failure of consumers to cut back and producers to open the spigot. Here’s one more weirdness: the absence of a long-term futures market.
Users of petroleum pay $120 a barrel and wonder when the price is going to $240, which would wreck a lot of businesses and careers being invested in today. Amid all this agony there is exotic oil that could be profitably extracted at $60 but is just sitting there because producers have their own angst. They’re wondering whether the market will crash before they can get the stuff out of the ground. Petroleum price crashes have happened before, turning synfuel projects into rust buckets.