Oil, Energy | featured news

Rex Tillerson, the boss of ExxonMobil admitted last week that the price of oil–based purely on supply and demand- should be in the $60 to $70 a barrel range. The reason it’s above $100 a barrel, Tillerson explained, is due to the oil majors using futures contracts to lock in current high prices, and speculation that is engineered by the high-frequency trading of quantitative hedge funds.

Oil prices tumbled nearly 5 percent on Wednesday, as easing supply concerns sent gasoline into a tailspin that briefly forced trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange to stop.

The average gas price in the United States has hit the $4 mark, just 11 cents shy of the all-time high, according to a survey published Sunday.

So now President Barack Obama has decided to go after the oil speculators. He wants to “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation.” He’s directed the Justice Department to set up a task force. Yessir, he’s determined to get to the bottom of this.

Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell Plc reported big jumps in first quarter earnings and beat forecasts, thanks to high oil prices and healthy refining margins.

In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles and gear - much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows....

Brent crude rose towards $120 a barrel and U.S. crude hit a 2-1/2-year high above $108 on Monday as unrest in the Middle East and North Africa kept the focus on oil supplies as economic growth bolstered demand for fuel.

Linking economic growth and energy independence, President Barack Obama says shifting the country away from imported oil and toward cleaner forms of energy will help continue a trend that has led to 1.8 million new jobs in the past 13 months.

Oil prices tumbled 3 percent Thursday, as economists warned that the recent surge in fuel prices will eventually hurt the fragile economic recovery....

The price of gas is going up so fast that even government reports can't keep up with it. A few days after the federal Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that the average price of regular gas in the U.S. is $3.19 per gallon -- marking the highest average February price since the government started keeping track in 1990 -- the AAA fuel gauge report on Thursday put the national average at $3.22. The price rose three cents per gallon in a day.