</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Canada supplies more oil to the US than any other country)</font>
Canada is the largest single supplier to the U.S. at about 17% of our needs, but we still rely on OPEC countries for more than 44% of all our crude oil. For the most current statistics, see
here .
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( and Russia has more oil than the Saudis and Iraq put together.)</font>
This is absolutely not true. At the end of 2003, the Russian Federation had 65 thousand million barrels of proved reserves, while Saudia Arabia had more 265 thousand million barrels. Even if you include all of Europe and Asia put together (including the North Sea), they had only 105.9 thousand million barrels of proved reserves, not even close to half of the Saudi reserves. You can see these statistics at a number of places yourself, such as
here and
here .
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( When the mega-money institutional hedge funds are holding 3 year oil futures contracts at $22 a barrel, you know that the current state of affairs will change abruptly. )</font>
I don't know about the mega-money institutional hedge funds, but oil companies (including the mega-majors) use the futures market to hedge risk. The nearer months mean a lot more than farther out; the low price that far out is more indicative of the uncertainty of the prediction than a definitive statement IMO. The price for oil on a given delivery date will change a lot over time as the date gets closer. The whole purpose of the (crude oil) futures trading market is to manage the risk of abrupt price changes, and in doing so many price changes are in fact smoothed out and made less abrupt.
Pete (not a futures trader; I just find the stuff.)
