Dollars and Jens
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Oil
Oil prices jumped half a buck yesterday on news that OPEC would raise their target price range from $22-$28 to $32-$34, mostly because the dollar has fallen quite a bit against most world currencies. But according to at least one anonymous source, it's not a done deal.
I don't think it'll matter all that much, anyway -- Saudi Arabia doesn't have much excess capacity right now, and I'm under the impression that nobody else has much, either. Unless demand slows (or the dollar rises a lot), the price isn't likely to drop substantially, whatever OPEC does.
So we'll have to wait for the commercialization of this:
A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity, reported the Associated Press.
Years of research and fine-tuning are ahead before the idea could be commercially viable, but results so far indicate there might be big benefits for farmers and consumers, lead researcher Yanhui Zhang said.
