Pricewatch »

• Pumping up the prices

  October 21, 2008 @ 9:53 pm | by Conor Pope

  It’s always amusing, if a little alarming, when experts get things spectacularly wrong. At the beginning of this year, when a barrel of crude oil broke through the psychologically important $100 (€74) barrier on international markets for the first time, analysts confidently predicted a lasting era of apocalyptically high oil prices.

  For months, it seemed as if they were spot on. Prices kept climbing, reaching a high of $147 (€110) in July. Irish consumers felt the pain almost immediately, with the price of petrol, diesel, home heating oil and electricity climbing dramatically and depressingly.

  Then, almost overnight, things changed. A new apocalypse, in the form of the global banking system’s near collapse, appeared on the horizon and as oil prices fell the story fell off the news pages .
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• Pumping up the prices

  January 21, 2008 @ 11:18 am | by Conor Pope

  The remnants of the celebratory champagne had barely gone flat when consumers received their first new-year dose of bad news. On January 3rd the price of a barrel of crude oil finally reached and briefly passed the milestone mark of $100 (€68) on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

  Global oil prices have been climbing steadily for months – the price of Brent Crude has almost doubled since the beginning of 2007 and increased fourfold over the past four years, so the breach of $100 was as inevitable as it was depressing.
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