Since October of last year, the oil price of crude oil on world futures markets began to grow rapidly. Various people explain it differently. The most common explanation - faith in the financial markets that the war between Israel and Iran or between Iran and the United States, or all three is inevitable. The other camp argues that the inevitable oil price increases, because the world has overcome what is called "oil peak" - an imaginary point on the Gaussian bell curve, which indicates that the depleted half of the known oil reserves in the world, and the remaining oil will decrease in the accelerating pace against a background of rising prices.
Explanations and under the threat of war and in the peak oil are far from the truth. As at the time of the astronomical rise in prices in the summer of 2008, when oil futures markets for a short time, went up to $ 147 per barrel oil price for oil is growing because of the speculative pressure on the oil futures markets by hedge funds and large banks, such as Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and in particular, Goldman Sachs, the latter always feels when and where the big bucks that can be taken without great effort, making error-free rate. They receive generous support from the U.S. government agency that is responsible for regulating financial derivatives - Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC).
But the demand for crude oil in the world does not increase but rather decreases. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that over the last three months of 2011 the world's oil supplies rose 1.3 million barrels a day, while world demand has grown only half of that for the same period of time. The use of gasoline in the United States fell by 8% in Europe - 22%, and even in China decreased. The recession is almost throughout the European Union, the deepening recession / depression in the United States and the economic slowdown in Japan have reduced global demand for oil, while new discoveries are announced daily, and countries such as Iraq, building up supplies after the war years. Short-term surge in oil procurement of China in January and February was related to the decision last December to create its own strategic oil reserve and is expected to demand return to more normal levels of imports by the end of this month.
In recent years, Wall Street-friendly (and financed by Wall Street), U.S. Congress passed several laws to help those banks who are interested in trading oil futures, among them one who in 2001 allowed the bankruptcy "Enron" with impunity, to create a pyramid scheme that cost billions of dollars before the company went bankrupt.
The role of key banks, along with the oil giants such as BP, in inflating a new bubble last fall in oil prices, regardless of real demand for physical delivery of actual oil barrels, marked by many sources.
