Crude Oil Price Chart
Studying a crude oil price chart is the quickest and easiest way to keep track of a volatile crude oil market.
A crude oil price chart is on every page of the Current Crude Oil Prices website. Look at the right hand side of the page near the top. The chart can be changed with one click to show the price of crude oil plotted at the current price over one month, one quarter, one year, and five year intervals.
The crude oil price chart makes for interesting if not frightening reading over the last year. The last few months have seen a price decline from an all time high level of $147 a barrel to a recent low of $32.00 a barrel. Such extreme volatility is a reflection of the worldwide economic crisis more so than actual supply demand considerations.
While a modest amount of demand destruction has occurred, primarily in America as the economy has slowed, economic growth at fairly high rates continues in China and India and that growth is demanding more crude oil imports. As major oil fields around the world are being rapidly depleted the prospect of real oil shortages, and the corresponding high prices that would bring, are very high within a few years.
In the run up to $147 a barrel large investors, such as hedge funds and banks, that didn’t really know that much about the crude oil market made big bets on crude oil prices moving higher as oil prices broke about $100 a barrel. The oil price did move up in spectacular fashion until the financial meltdown created panic among investors as virtually all assets prices, including the price for crude oil, began to collapse in the second half of 2008.
Many investors were forced by margin calls to sell their crude oil futures contracts along with most everything else in their over leveraged portfolios. Thus supply and demand factors become secondary to fear driven liquidation markets in setting prices.
In the long run relatively low prices as plotted on the crude oil price chart are setting the stage for much higher oil prices in the near future. Peak oil has arrived. The cancellation of oil exploration and drilling ventures as well as alternative energy projects due to low current prices for crude oil almost insure that within the next few years charts for crude oil will be showing all time high prices well above $147 a barrel.
