With Oil Supplies Dropping, Look for Prices to Soar Again

Oil giant credits strong demand

(AP) - Halliburton says the expansion of oil and natural gas drilling in North America helped boost company earnings by nearly 54% in the second quarter. Revenue also hit a company record for the period. The Houston oil services giant reported earnings of $739 million, or 80 cents per share today, with revenue jumping 35.2% to $5.94 billion. More»

Cable argues that kingdom can't pump enough crude to control prices

(NEWSER) - The world may be on the verge of an oil crisis, according to WikiLeaks cables released to the Guardian today. According to the cables, Sadad al-Husseini, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil monopoly, warned diplomats that Saudi reserves were overstated by almost 40%, and that the country couldn’t reach the 12.5 million barrel-per-day production capacity needed to keep global oil prices in check. He predicted that the world would hit “peak oil” as early as 2012. More»

The oil behemoth shattered the annual profit record despite slow fourth quarter

(AP) - Buoyed by last year's spike in crude prices, Exxon Mobil Corp. today reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a US company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33% from a year ago. The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world's largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007. More»

(NEWSER) - OPEC has approved a cut in output of 2.2 million barrels of crude a day, the largest reduction ever, MSNBC reports. The consortium believes that stabilizing prices now by decreasing supply will guard against a price spike when consumer confidence increases. OPEC’s monthly report predicts that demand will have fallen 700,000 barrels in 2008, and will decline by twice that amount in 2009. More»

Consumption will drop in consecutive years; first time in 3 decades

(NEWSER) - The price of oil continued its descent today, settling at $42.07 a barrel amid new signs of collapsing demand worldwide, the Financial Times reports. Global consumption will shrink by 50,000 barrels a day in 2008 and by a whopping 450,000 barrels a day in 2009, the Energy Department says. Meanwhile, prices aren't expected to return to the sky-high levels of this summer for the foreseeable future. More»