From yesterday's LA Times, "Fortunes shift as oil prices soar."
http://www.latimes.com/...
Oil makes the world go 'round. Each day, more than 85 million barrels of black gold are pumped from the ground -- that's nearly 70 ounces for each of the 6.6 billion men, women and children on Earth.
Since January, the price of a barrel of oil has almost doubled and is now approaching $100. Blame tensions in the Middle East, speculators on a quest for profit and the hunger for energy of rising powers, including India and China.
So where has the money gone? Who is profiting from the rise in prices?
Well, Russian oil barons for one, according to Yelena Kudozova, organizer of Russia's "Millionaire Fair"
"It is really symbolic that the time when oil prices are about to reach $100 a barrel coincides with our fair," said Kudozova, the event's director. "Russia is growing more and more influential, and it consumes more and more luxury. I can't even imagine such a fair to be held, for instance, in 1991 Russia. A Millionaire Fair in Russia at that time would have been an oxymoron!"
High oil prices helped produce a bumper crop of billionaires in Russia this year -- 53 to be precise, according to Forbes magazine, compared with 34 in 2006 -- not to mention the country's 103,000-plus millionaires. The oil business was a key component in the fortunes of at least 16 of those billionaires, Forbes said
The new place to go for ostentatious displays of the noveau riche is Russia.
The rise in prices seems to be hurting most everyone else, even the unmentioned millions of Russians not in the "millionaire" class. Cab drivers in Baghdad, Shanghai tour group operators, French fishermen, and even Israelis who are forbidden to chop down trees to heat their homes. The impression I get from the article is that the sole beneficiaries of $100 a barrel oil is a small group of Russian millionaires and motorists in Venezuela who have their fuel costs "subsidized".
Is anybody missing from this picture? What about big oil, Exxon, Chevron, BP, ect., the small group of insiders who control these companies and the speculators who are also at least partially complicit in the run up in prices. Mentioned in passing at the start of this 4 page story,
"Blame tensions in the Middle East, speculators on a quest for profit"
but absent from the body of the story itself. Tensions in the Middle East, a large part of this due to the unnecessary invasion of and continuing occupation of Iraq. The most ardent group of cheerleaders for this disaster have been those connected with the American Enterprise Institute, a group with a board of trustees composed of Hedge fund operators, Lee Raymond ex-ceo of Exxon, and Insurance industry executives. I would suggest that this group has profited greatly from the run-up in oil prices and through propaganda mills like the AEI will continue to push for a foreign policy that keeps "feathering their nests". How long will a group like this be allowed to dictate US foreign policy to the detriment of most of the US and the world?