NEWS: Oil Prices Skyrocket to New Highs Amidst YUKOS Shutdown

Stocks plummet and oil prices soars as the Russian oil giant, YUOKS, is reporting that it will halt all oil sales. US Crude Oil rose $1.21 to at total of $43.05 a barrel. This price is higher than the recored per-barrel oil prices hit back in June. This announcement from YUKOS means the US has to rely even more on OPEC.

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This news breaks as we are hearing about the worst day in Iraq since the regime change. Gas prices will no doubt follow suit and raise along with oil prices. All this combined is leading to a bad day on Wall Street.

US officials continue to worry about the threat of a major attack on the mideast oil infrastructre. Such an attack could shutdown the US and cause oil prices to skyrocket.

Combined with Venezuela's decision not to sell the US oil and the weakening of the USD against the EURO have all lead to record breaking oil prices. With occurances as crippling as the YUKOS shutdown continue to happen it can easily be expected that oil prices will continue to raise.

[edit on 7-28-2004 by Valhall]

[edit on 7-29-2004 by Valhall]

Further information as extracted from the Global Security Report:

"RUSSIA - Yukos ordered to stop selling oil
Russian authorities have ordered oil giant Yukos to stop selling oil, the company has said. Bailiffs said sales were to cease at Yukos' main production units, whose 1.7 million barrels of oil a day make up 20% of Russia's oil output. Yukos chief executive Stephen Theede said, "My assumption was that it was a misinterpretation. It does not seem logical to me for the bailiffs to take action to immediately stop production," he told correspondents in Nizhnevartosk in Siberia. "We have no choice but to comply with what the bailiffs ask us to do, but sometimes it's a matter of getting an interpretation." According to news agencies, the justice ministry told Yukos to stop selling property - an effective ban on oil sales. "It should be pointed out that the process of providing oil into the... pipeline system cannot be ceased without stopping... all of the companies' activities," a Yukos spokesperson said. This "will lead to the unemployment of 15,000 employees of the companies", it warned. The justice ministry, however, dismissed the claim. "I am officially announcing that the company will have no problems, including with paying wages, as a result of a freeze of its accounts," justice minister Yury Chaika was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. The order appears to have had no impact on agreements to transport crude and petroleum products out of the Baltic and Black Sea, ship brokers told Reuters. "

**See credits from today's Global Security Report for 07/28/04**

i know Putin is threatened by Khodorkovsky's political ambitions and also wants to derail Yukos efforts to merge with ExxonMobil in order to keep Yukos' oil revenues inside Russia, but I don't understand why they would take the action to cease all Yukos oil output....I mean isn't this hurting Russia more than anything???

-raven

Will the U.S. economy crumble because of its' depenence on foreign oil? All indicators point to our demise. The terrorist are using our own economy against us.

I think we should start the switch-over from gas to hydrogen fuel cells, its better in every aspect, plus I bet if everyone in the US starts driving fuel cell powered cars our economy would rise and it would piss off stuped azz terrorist cause they would have no more point to keep blowing up the oil lines in Iraq.

d000d... Imagine if all of a sudden the people in the US stopped using petrol, gas...and started using water.

How many unemployed because of it? Service stations, petrol stations, petrol companies, etc....

It would be like what happened in England when Tractors and other machinery started getting using for farms instead of people doing it...
Massive unemployment.

Not a valid comparision. The industrial revolution changed the way users of land conducted there business. In the beginning it was to adapt to this revolution but the vast majority of people did. Through a slow process of reeducation and job training must people addopted.
Look what the computer generation has done to our own society.

If that's the case, every non-producing petroleum consuming country is at risk -- not just the US. Russia, Venezuela, opec countries are the only ones safe.

[Edit]
DaRage, those folks won't be out of jobs -- their job will switch to providing supplies of alternative fuels.

[edit on 7/29/2004 by titian]

you can'tuse water to power your car. What are you talking about?

Fuel cells emmits water from it's tailpipe other then harmfull exhaust, is that where you got confused.

And there would still need to be hydrogen stations.

People always think with the advent of a new thing that it will immediatly create mass unemployment. The reality is it usually provides more jobs.

When computers started to first be used decades ago people though they could do every job, but it has showed that computers have created a lot more jobs then they have took.

Don't worry people US and bush have the Iraqi oil everything is going to be just find,

This is just a joke.

from the YUKOS corporate website




anybody know who those private investors were?

Some of the private investors are US and countries in Europe