Tim Evans Oil Quotations

Really, we've had some focus (on oil) since mid-February, when both markets made a significant low, and both markets had a near retest of those lows on Wednesday. Oil is emerging as the focus for the gold market as a surrogate for general commodity inflation. Without that kind of commodity inflation, then gold becomes a less attractive investment.

It is pretty clear they were attempting to move this oil into a crude oil market where there was already a surplus.

Crude oil may have been able to trigger short covering off the surprise 1.3 million-barrel draw from last week, but inventories are still at their second-highest weekly total since April 1999.

The oil companies themselves aren't interested in building new refineries and will tend to denigrate the chances of any new investors actually succeeding in their business. They'll say, 'What does Richard Branson know about oil refineries?' He doesn't have to know about that part of the business, but he can easily see that oil refiners are making a margin far superior to what he's making in the airline business.

I'm surprised by the drop in crude stocks and the further decline in crude oil imports,

I'm not sure this is the start of a new trend in crude oil stocks and it probably reflects more of a desire on the part of refiners to limit the material they hold than it does a lack of supply,

In the short run, it means more oil drained from the market into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

If you're talking about a 400,000 barrels per day refinery next to a French Chateau in the Loire valley, the timeline is infinite. If you're looking at an industrialized part that already includes an oil refinery, it's much less of a big deal.

A Bush status quo results in somewhat higher oil prices both in the short and the longer term in my view,

Heating oil and natural gas are...faced with significant warming trends that have brought an abrupt end to the heating season.