Do you have editors? Do they fact check your information?

There is no oil shortage. There hasn't been an oil shortage. In 2008 there was no oil shortage, yet prices rose anyway. Funny enough, the financial speculators were saying the opposite. They used their friends in the media to drive up fear and misinformation on oil supplies. I wish you'd look at the petroleum institute, see their weekly stats. We have so much oil in storage that any temporary interruptions are no big deal.

Remember what reporters are supposed to do? They are supposed to wonder what ulterior motives they person you're talking to might have. Well, they use people like you to hype fears and drive up commodities prices. Between QE2 and the discount window at the Federal Reserve the markets are awash in cash, and you are their useful idiot.

Bin Laden himself has said that they would sell us the oil, that's what they do. Now, you might ask, what happens when Jordan collapses, and Syria. Then you can worry, not about oil, but Israel. Once that adventure ends, the ME will be a land of calm and justice. That's because we will be able to protect our interests, rather than controlling the region with our pet dictators. For those who wonder why the ME is so screwed up, well, the West has occupied it for 90 yrs.

The elephant in the room that everyone overlooks on Saudi Arabia (and the majority of the middle east, but especially oil-producing countries, and particularly there), is demographics. With extremely high birth rates combined with extremely high structural youth unemployment rates, millions of young men that will never be married (and therefore second-class citizens in a very conservative traditional society), and dependence on effectively slave labor, it's only a matter of time before the house of cards falls. The country is already a hotbed for recruiting young extremists/terrorists, but it's difficult to blame those that fall into it considering the circumstances.

I really need to buy a good bicycle or three. They might be hot commodities soon.

Are Morgan Stanley and Citibank still leasing oil tankers, filling them with crude and then anchoring them off the west coast to game up the price of oil as was reported a few years ago by Bloomberg News?

Let's hope that the Saudi Royal Family gets what is coming to them. More than anything I would love to see them get their asses kicked out of the country. They are not our friends nor are they our allies. They are in some way responsible for 9/11. We saved their sorry butts from the Iraqi lunatic and his army. They should be forever in our debt an be giving us oil and half price if not for free. They are an oppressive regime and should go away ASAP.

I think Matt Simmons got it right that the Saudi's are past peak which means we can expect $100/barrel and beyond oil as the norm. What people need is to make themselves more resilient to the sorts of shocks in all areas this will cause and "Thriving During Challenging Times, The Energy, Food, and Financial Independence Handbook" provides a roadmap to navigate these converging challenges. www.aztext.com/reh.cfm

Nice summary of issues.With regard to some of the questions posed, I have been an environmnental lawyer for 35 years and have devoted much time trying to understand the oil industry and the ways in which its reguation is attempted. With regard to your questions:

1. Will Saudi Arabia exercise more transparency? Not until the rest of the world effectively demands it. Matt Simmons, one of the world's most respected oil experts, made a virtual career of demanding transparency from OPEC and Saudi Arabia for a decade. He failed completely. It has been long known that the OPEC nations all substantially over-rate their own reserves, but the response of the US (and other regulatory agencies under pressure from the US) has been to follow the OPEC numbers as gospel even while knowing them to be false.

2. Does Saudi Arabia really have a 4 mbpd "cushion" it can make use of? It doesn't really matter. World oil production is dropping 2-3 mbpd per year, and will continue to do so indefinitely, at the same time as Chinese consumption is rising 1mbpd per year. These facts mean that Saudi Arabia's 4 mbpd cushion, if it exists, is good for less than 2 years. We might as well get used to its being gone.

3. Could a regulatory process for deep-sea drilling be designed to permit such drilling to go forward? In principle yes, in practice no. We have watched BP's claims being accepted as gospel by the Obama administration for the last year despite every reason to mistrust them,. For example, the 15-second video of its gusher was used by several independent observers to conclude that it was 5-10 times the 5k barrels per day figure that was official, yet the Administration never questioned it until the end, when the higher rate became indisputable. Assign 1 underpaid, under-knowledged under-supported engineer to review a proposal pushed by 5 corporate lawyers, 5 high-paid petroleum engineerss, and an unlimited support budget, and the reslt is pre-ordained. That's reality. I was air-quality attorney to an NGO when Chevron's Richmond CA refinery had a thruput of millions of dollars per day in crude but the maximum fine that could be imposed on it for a regulatory violation was $35/day. Before regulations on deepsea drilling can be effective, the regulatory system has to be totally revamped - there is no will for that at this time.

Nicholas C. Argjuimbau

The only important question was #4. I think Matt inDallas and R Kerg make good points. The price for oil was ran up by speculatoras in 2008, probably by the insiders view that there would be an attack against Iran and the shipping lanes out of the Persian Gulf would be closed. When Bush turned down the Israelis in the summer, the prices started to decline. All you have to do is watch a late night show in CNBC and the group of speculators will show how it'sall done. When people get pissed enough to realize we can't drill our way out of an insatiable demand for fuel, they might think of GASP!!, cutting back on the God awful ways we waste fuel and energy. Do we really need passenger cars with 500-600 hp, other than compensation for the man with a very small dick? Do we really need to keep all the lights on at night in every skyscraper in the country. We don't have to look like N Korea at night, but we could save probably $100billion in electricity costs per year by shutting off the lights at night. The most important question Mr Levine should have asked: Why has Congress allowed this casino type wild speculation in the commodities markets to continue? It was created by the Commodities Modernization Act of 2000 and allowed for legalized robbery from the pockets of every person who fill up at the pump or buys a loaf of bread. It has to stop. My biggest concern is that it will only stop when over-leveraging by the hedge funds causes the next crash.