Knock, knock. Anybody home?

Oil prices forced slightly higher by quite deliberately constrained supply! Results in a very small increase in margins at the expense of significant volumes which is where the real profit results are made.

Moreover, after damaging the economy, just aids and abets alternative supply and transport options.

The real problem here is the paper shuffling profit demanding middlemen, Who buy, sell and extract as much windfall profit as they can, via the power of the purse!

And just add to the ever-increasing pressure to access alternatives! Tight oil, electric vehicles, CNG! (methane)

We here in oz, have 700 years worth of coal and the scrubbed methane extracted from that coal will power almost any conventional combustion engine as compressed gas! Or ceramic fuel cells as methane.

A cubic metre of (uncompressed) gas having the same calorific value as one litre of petrol.

And only requires a government able to put Australia and Australians first! To legislate and facilitate the conversion! Methane can also be passed through a simple catalytic conversion process to convert it into liquid methanol. which can also power most conventional combustion engines

Nothing else prevents that conversion other than, I believe, the strings pulled by their puppet masters?
Alan B.

Poor old Saudis are so deserving of respect and their international oil power remembering how they've encouraged and financed:

- religious intolerance and gender inequality in the Islamic world,

- murder of the journalist in their consulate in Turkey [1] and

- terrorism in the Western world.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashoggi

Classic Adam Smith profiteering tactics used by Tobacco Merchants in Glassgow during the US War Of Independence.

We need to find an alternative to oil to "increase supply" and reduce the population of the world to "reduce demand".