Who decides how much a barrel of cost to the U.S., and why wont the U.S. use the stored reserves.?

Answer 1

Very rich and powerful men decide how much it will cost you to fill your gas tank or heat your home. They do this by controlling how much oil flows out of the oil fields at any given time. Too much oil and the price goes down too far, thus cutting into their huge profits. If they restrict the flow too much, the price goes up too high, and it weakens economies and the value of currencies, and they would receive a violent response. The US now is BushOilCo, a group of family and friends who are deeply into the oil business ( at one time every member of Bush's cabinet was a board member on an oil company ), and they enjoy great profit from keeping the prices up, and indeed their foreign policy of destabilizing the Middle East keeps the price of oil nice and high. So, don't count on anything but that what it will cost you, and the rest of us, to be addicted to oil, will continue to go up year after year in a very profitable way for the people the Bush family pals around with.

Answer 2

the world market determines the price per barrel. Supply and demand in a nut shell. The Strategic Oil Reserves is for national security issues such as if Iran blocked the strait of Hormuz which is a strong possibility if we go to war with them. It would cut off 20%of the world supply in a minute. The SOR is to provide up to 90 days of crude oil for our nation in the event this happened. It is NOT a political football or for price manipulation.

Answer 3

The pricing of crude oil is quite complex, Some people think opec decides this is not true opec decides only on the volume or flow on the market as far as their members are concerned not the price,The market decides on the price it does this in 2 ways It bids on something called Marker crude such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI – USA), Brent (Europe and Africa), Dubai and Oman (Middle East), and Tapis and Dubai (in Asia). The main criteria for a marker crude is for it to be sold in sufficient volumes to provide liquidity (many buyers and sellers) in the physical market as well as having similar physical qualities of alternative crudes. In addition the marker crude should provide pricing information.

WTI does this through its use on the New York Metals Exchange as the basis of a futures contract where trade is equivalent to many hundreds of millions of barrels per day, even though physical WTI production is less than 1 million barrels per day. A futures contract for crude oil is a promise to deliver a given quantity of crude oil but this rarely occurs as participants are more interested in taking a position on the price of the crude oil. Futures markets are a financial instrument to distribute risk among participants with the side effect of providing transparency on the pricing of crude oil

Prices of crude oil markers and petrol markers are affected by a myriad of factors from overall supply/demand for crude oil, supply/demand for petrol, freight rates and competition in the crude markets, and competition in the regional and domestic markets for petrol. They all have a role in determining the final price charged to consumers and the role that each of these elements plays can change over time. It is this very complexity in markets which makes it very difficult to determine a theoretical price as part of regulation in markets because there may be a perception that because the theoretical price is different from the market price that the market price is ‘not fair’ for some reason

Answer 4

If we Taped into the Reserves we wouldn't have Reserves the reason why the gas price's are so high is do to the fact of the Hurricane give it another 2 years our ride a bike you will live longer live longer and have more Money.

Answer 5

OPEC decides how much a barrel of oil will cost. I am also tired of depending on foreign oil. If the libs in DC would just let us drill in Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico perhaps oil would be cheaper.

Answer 6

the market decides and the US only taps into it's stored reserves are only used when there is a serious oil shortage in a certain area, such as the states by the Gulf of Mexico when Hurricane Katrina hit and all the oil rigs were damaged

Answer 7

the reserves are there for military use, like if all oil is cut off from the country in order to lay siege to the US. The oil will be used by the military to fight back and to get a new oil supply

Answer 8

OPEC sets their price and market forces either drive that price up or down, mostly up. Notice I didn't say supply and demand.

Answer 9

opec.