I’ve read most all the oil speculation articles and they are shallow to say the least.
A: They do not address fundamentals which I clearly have stated trend up.
B: For every long contract purchased on behalf of a pension fund or index fund, somebody has to short oil. What we’ve been seeing is that speculators have been getting increasingly short as index fund long participation in the oil market increased.
Furthermore, during the second quarter of 2008, while the price of oil rose from $100 to $140, there were net investor outflows from energy-related exchange-traded funds that are long. In fact, investors bet an additional $270 million on energy shorts during the second quarter: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=ace77xJYOjNU&refer=e…. These shorts are turned into shorts in the futures market.