Prometheus 6

"The market is no longer about physical supply and demand for oil," says Ben Dell, energy analyst at Sanford Bernstein in New York. "The Saudis could be pumping another million barrels and it wouldn't change a thing."...

Many investors seem to be using oil as a hedge against a weak dollar. Others are simply riding a profitable trend.

Periscope: How Hot Money Is Pushing Oil To $100 a Barrel And Beyond
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:11 PM ET Nov 17, 2007

As oil prices swung wildly last week—first surging breathtakingly close to the $100 mark, then dropping off again—there was some frantic finger-pointing over just who (or what) was to blame for the latest spike in prices. Resisting calls for OPEC to pump more oil to cool off markets, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi insisted that supplies and inventories are meeting demand and don't justify the current sense of crisis. To bolster his argument, al-Naimi carted Western attendees of last week's OPEC summit in Riyadh into the desert to show off a $500 million mega-expansion project that will raise the country's production by 250,000 barrels a day. The $25 jump since September, al-Naimi said, was the fault of "speculators" beyond the cartel's control.