We had planned on going to bid in late February. However, we woke up one morning in early February to find that Exxon had frozen $12 billion of Venezuela's assets in court and Venezuela had reacted predictably by threatening to cancel oil shipments to the US. The price shot up 50 cents per gallon and never came down again.

There are several problems; this country's enormous debt, the subprime crisis, lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Bank and the unrestrained printing of money have devalued the value of the dollar substantially. Since oil is pegged to the dollar, this has helped run up the price of oil. Another problem is speculation. There is no question that crude oil is overpriced. In the commodities market, money is chasing money. The question is how much? Hedge fund operators like George Soros have testified to Congress that they see a possible "bubble in the commodities market. . The question is if and when it will break. A final piece of the puzzle is the fact that Lehman Bros has predicted that about 2 million barrels a day of new oil will hit the market early next year. So, there is a good chance that oil prices will actually decline in late 2008 or early 2009. See this article written for laymen:

To see for yourself some articles about the commodity "bubble", copy and paste those two words in Google and look at the results or click on commodity bubble.