Is it High, Is it Low, How much can we make, before They all know?

I found both these stories on Bloomberg today.  After reading these, do you feel that you’ve been drilled as well? How can oil be poised to go to $85 by the end of the year, and go to $60 because of a glut?  Remember someone telling you about fuzzy math?

#1

By Mark Shenk

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil is “coiled” to spring to $85 a barrel before the end of the year, according to a technical analysis by Auerbach Grayson, a brokerage in New York.

The range that crude oil has traded in has narrowed since futures broke though resistance at $76.50 a barrel on Oct. 15 and reached a one-year high of $82 on Oct. 21, according to Richard Ross, an analyst at Auerbach Grayson. This pattern is setting up the market to rise, he said.

“A coil has formed since Oct. 15 as the range has got narrower and narrower,” Ross said in a telephone interview. “We’re seeing the lows get higher and the highs get lower.”

The former resistance level of $76.50 was tested last week and held as a new support level, according to Ross. A close above $80 a barrel will be a signal for traders to push prices to $85.

“Prices will probably break out to the upside due to the fact that $76.50 has been tested and held,” Ross said.

Crude oil for December delivery fell $2.34, or 3 percent, to $76.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement price since Oct. 14. The contract traded between $76.55 and $82 after breaking through the Oct. 15 resistance level.

#2

By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — Oil in New York may fall as low as $60 a barrel next year as wealthy countries maintain near-record levels of crude and fuel inventories, said Deutsche Bank AG’s Chief Energy Economist Adam Sieminski.

Crude-oil inventories are currently equivalent to “61-day forward cover in Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries while normal levels would be 55 days,” Sieminski said in a telephone interview from Washington D.C. today. “That’s 300 million barrels of oil too much, with daily demand estimates of about 50 million barrels.”

Deutsche Bank forecasts West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark, to average $65 a barrel in 2010, Sieminski said. That’s $10 below the median estimate of 36 analysts compiled by Bloomberg News. Oil may reach $60 in the middle of the year when the U.S. and China start to ease stimulus spending, he said.

Crude and fuel stockpiles stored in non-government tanks in the OECD’s 30 member-nations rose to 2.76 billion barrels in the third quarter, close to the record 2.77 billion barrels reached in 1998, U.S. Energy Department data show. The 1998 glut caused oil to collapse to $10 a barrel.

The volume of heating oil and jet fuel stored offshore increased 17 percent to 112 tankers with a combined capacity of 13.1 million deadweight tons, London-based Simpson, Spence & Young Ltd., the world’s second-largest shipbroker, said in a report on Nov. 6. Deadweight tons is a measure of a ship’s capacity to carry cargo, fuel and water.

Sieminski expects oil to climb as high as $85 next month. “I would expect that would come some time in December if the dollar hits 1.55 to the euro,” he said.

Oil has gained 78 percent in New York this year, and was at $79.21 a barrel at 1:47 p.m. Tokyo time. The dollar traded at $1.4997 per euro at 1:29 p.m. in Tokyo compared with $1.4987 in New York yesterday, when it touched $1.5048, the lowest since Oct. 26

TSA changes procedure after Ron Paul supporter incident

Transportation Security Administration screeners at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport probably wish that the fellow they chose to grill last March about a box of cash wasn’t a Ron Paul devotee who runs a committee devoted to individual rights and constitutional government.

But grill Steven Bierfeldt they did, and eight months later the incident has yielded revised rules requiring TSA agents to stick to matters related to flight security rather than policing airports for other crimes.

Bierfeldt and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented him in a lawsuit, announced in a news release this week that the TSA had changed its rules in response to the litigation.

“It’s a huge victory for civil liberties that TSA agents no longer have free rein to conduct sweeping, baseless searches and detain passengers who don’t pose a threat to flight safety,” Bierfeldt said in a statement.

A TSA spokeswoman, Lauren Gaches, acknowledged to the Washington Times on Tuesday that the policy with regard to cash had changed but declined to release copies of directives. The newspaper quoted her as saying that the TSA “routinely assesses its policies and screening procedures to ensure the highest levels of security nationwide.”

Last spring, a TSA blog post defended the questioning but concluded that “language used by the TSA employee was inappropriate.”

A later blog post referring to “the St. Louis incident” says that “the tone and language used by the TSA employee was inappropriate, and proper disciplinary action was taken.”

Bierfeldt said he was ushered to a small room and questioned after passing a metal box containing $4,700 through a Lambert screening checkpoint. He said the cash related to his job as director of development for the Campaign for Liberty, a lobbying group that sprouted from the presidential campaign last year of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican from Texas.

Bierfeldt said he was interrogated for a half-hour in an increasingly threatening manner and told he was being placed under arrest. He recorded audio of the episode on his iPhone.

Bierfeldt’s suit contended that the TSA’s pre-flight screening should be aimed at keeping weapons and explosives off airplanes.

Before it was due to be heard in September, the ACLU said the TSA issued a policy directive stating that “screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.”

The government agency responded in October with a second directive pointing out that transporting large amounts of cash is not illegal, the release said. The ACLU added that it is taking steps to drop the suit on Bierfeldt’s behalf.

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