The Oil Drum with a good roundup of the latest news on spiking oil prices. Referenced in the comments, this article from WSJ is none-too-good:
The market got its first nudge when reports broke that the Bush administration planned to slap economic sanctions on two prime components of Iran's military, as well as several of the country's top state-owned banks. The steps marked a ratcheting up of pressure from Washington and deepened fears that the Bush administration may be set on a path toward outright conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.
Then came the comments from OPEC's Mr. El-Badri, suggesting that the cartel didn't plan to step up production to add supplies to the world market.
Traders next reacted to a report from Oil Movements, a British company that monitors oil-tanker traffic in an effort to get around the secrecy of major oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The company's weekly report, which went out in the morning, said OPEC shipments for the first 10 days of November appeared to be "well below the October equivalents."
The report estimated that October OPEC shipments were likely to be about 300,000 barrels a day more than their September level, "but early indications for next month are that there may be nothing more to come." The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, but a minor disruption can have an outsize effect because the margin between supply and demand has narrowed in recent years....
Winter is typically when the world burns the most oil. But according to the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based energy watchdog for Western countries, stocks fell 33 million barrels, or 360,000 barrels a day, between July and September. That contrasts with an average third-quarter increase in stocks of 280,000 barrels a day during the past five years.
The agency in August said the amount of oil in tanks had fallen below the five-year average to about 54 days of consumption.
"We're in an extremely tight supply situation," said Ann-Louise Hittle, a Wood Mackenzie oil-market analyst. That, she said, was giving credence to "peak oil theory" and the idea that supply won't be able to meet growing demand.
