Oil Prices Continue To Drop

They have fallen about $24 a barrel from a high two weeks ago of $148. There are several factors for this besides the push here in the US for more drilling for our domestic sources. Brazil recently announced the discovery of a couple huge oil fields off their coast and they aren't shy about exploiting them. Plus now that Iraq is becoming stabilized they have opened some of their huge fields for bidding and their output has been steadily increasing to above prewar levels. All of this combined has promise of more oil coming into the future market prompting speculators to sell off their futures holdings while they could. The incredibly rapid rise in prices had all the hallmarks of a speculative bubble and like all bubbles when they get too big they burst. It is still too early to tell if the bubble has burst but my fingers are crossed that it has but regardless we still need to drill here to prevent this same thing from happening again.
The other and most important reason in my book is that tapping into our own sources of oil keeps hundreds of billions of dollars in the US economy and creates many thousands of good high paying jobs. This point needs to be made over and over again as it is one that will resonate with the people. The same point could be made for coal since we have one of the most massive reserves in the world. We need access to energy to power our economy and we need to explore all means of acquiring that energy, oil, coal, natural gas, nonfood based biofuels, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal.
We also need to remember that oil is used in far more things than the fuel we put into our cars or heat our homes with, its byproducts are also used in plastics, cosmetics, asphalt, polyester, satin, nylon and many many more things that we use daily. We need oil and that need will not change for many years yet to come.