I firmly believe there needs to be safety controls in place to prevent greed driven spikes in prices on the commodities exchange the same as there were safety controls implimented after the great crash of the Thirty's to prevent a bottoming out of stocks.

Ted McKeown, North Bay, Canada

Gas has gone up 20% in 6 months.............

Its great living in a low inflation economy.

M walker, Nr Bromsgrove, Worcs

Dear David and Dominic,

Have you come across sustainable biofuel production yet.
It will soon become a reality, and I should know!

www.gardenia.net

Ray Bishop
Director and Guerrilla Grower
Gardenia.net Ltd.
in Association with Willowbrook Hospice

Ray, Upholland, UK

in world war II the leaders froze prices, suspended trading of commodities stabalizing inflation and prices of goods necessary for life sustanance. what iswrong with our leaders doing that again, is it their own personal greed and their alliance to those traders who contribute to them

fred, middleburg fl, usa

When are govenments going to wake up and remove the speculators from the equation. We are paying the cost of dealers playing roulette with oil.

B Brodie, Newcastle,

I am sure Gordon Brown is itching to put the boot in with and additional 2p per litre on fuel. He could also make it retrospective and make it 4p as it was waived/postponed last time.
Our whole culture is due to change.It will be commonplace for young married couples to live with their parents

V Cooper, Yeovil, UK

David and Dominic,

The global economic and environmental collapse is now gathering speed at an alarming rate.

You may like to know that I have a solution for two of the key issues: sustainable biofuel and food production.

Regards,
Ray Bishop
Gardenia.net LTd.

Ray, Upholland, UK

This is good news for oil-producing countries of course - maybe the Scots will finally get fed up of subsidising England by £20 billion/year, and head off to become as rich as Norway (no other natural resources, little industry, but the 2nd richest country in Europe). Time for England to wake up!

Graeme, Dinan, France

Ray - Also remember that you in the US drive absolutely ludicrous vehicles that do 12mpg.

If you drove sensible vehicles then the Yanks could be self-sufficient instead of relying on imports from your Arab 'friends'.

Just wait till the dollar is ditched as the petroleum currency......

Hibbo, Stavanger, Norway

The G8 could at the very least act to halt the dollar's decline. Once the market realises that they are serious that would take away one reason to keep buying oil.

Ian, Chigwell, UK

Hi!
Do you know about the new site www.treehoo.com that plants trees for most of its profit? Use it as you default homepage, it has Google search and more so it works fine. It makes it really easy to fight global warming and climate change, for free! Can any other webportal beat all this?

Rufus, New York, U.S.A.

Ray, there are two problems with your oil shale. One is the obvious problem of that it takes more energy, water and oil to extract the oil from shale, than what you get in return. And two, is that most of the shale is in Canadian territory. Never mind huh?

Scott Rhodes, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Increasing oil production won't help. It will just give the speculators more amounts to buy and so bigger profits. Then it will run out quicker. The North Sea produces enough oil for the UK - look at the CIA factbook - but where does it all go?

Fred, Moray, Scotland

There is much less non-rush hour traffic on the roads. I couldn't believe that I experienced no queues on the North Circular on my way to Brent Cross shopping centre yesterday.
I have noticed that traffic levels have fallen in recent times as petrol has become more expensive.

Nicky, London,

China still get crude at around $65 per bbl. In a way, they are right its only the speculators that drive the price - they have theirs pegged for 12 months.

About 80% of the oil is traded on contracts - also to airlines.

The US can also stop printing US$ notes - that would help most.

Knut, Oslo , Norway

The blame for high oil prices lies with the Federal Reserve and other central banks for keeping their base interest rates too low. Oil will soon be priced in Euros and the US dollar will be finished as the global reserve currency.

Paul, Coventry,

People will always speculate given the option and this is the time for it.
However, if a cap could be put on the price during this period, then there would be a limited level of damage and producers would still earn a fair price.

John, London,

Micheal O'Leary was on TV this week sounding very bullish (Hubris?). Quite glad I never bought a second home in Spain, soon the airfare will cost more than the property.

Mark, Epping, Essex

Oil is in a bubble, driven by state supplied liquidity that banks want to lend to a better bet than retail lending - commodity futures!.
US/UK/EU Recession is the pin to burst it.
Oil will climb, until 1st world demand snaps. Simple.
Recession is inevitable, best get on with it then.

Mike, Tauranga, New Zealand

Why do people continually bang on about huge oil shale reserves in the USA when they must know that extracting oil from shale is environmentally and cost prohibitive and even if you spent the billions to extract it the daily production would barely scratch the surface of daily US consumption

Paul, London, UK

Oil supply is stagnant if not in decline, globilization is eroding the purchasing power of the Western Citizenry vs Global Citizenry.
It is hardly surprising that people in the West should seek to hedge themselves against this re-allignment by buying into commodity funds. This is a LONG problem.

Mark, Epping, Essex

If people speculate on the price of oil its not their fault.
The problem lies with the FED and the US government who are quite prepared to debase the US currency.

SRB, Abergele, UK

Not everybody loses out to high oil.
The president of the USA is from Texas where there is a boom going on.(Flashback Dallas/Dynasty)
The UK is actually self sufficient in oil,but our Labour government has squandered our oil wealth with high taxes and low incentives for more North sea exploration.

James Currie, London, UK

I can fully understand why lorry drivers are thoroughly angry about their European conterparts competing for business in the UK. It is not a level playing field. The whole theory of a European Union is a bloody nonsense.

Chris, Chipping Norton,

I would have thought that Ryanair are likely to make a loss this year.They cannot increase their fares as they are a low cost airline.The high oil price is a direct result of the crazy policies of the FED in slashing interest rates.They should have cut them slowly in order to avoid panic.

stephen hulton, eure, france

Remember we in the US have about 200 years of oil trapped in shale and sand. Our Labor Party (Democrats ) will not let us drill for it. The vote against it was 15-13 straight party line vote.
15 Dems against.

Ray, Gurnee, USA

No it doesn't show that capitalism is finished. It shows that there are worries a plenty for economists based on previous experience with high oil prices. The big question is whether it is true that half the price is speculation and whether it will come down slowly or in a big drop.

Chris Curtis, Auckland, New Zealand

Just as governments subsidize public transit for the public good so soon must they do the same for air transport,goods haulage and perhaps marine transport if they expect to see these sectors survive. This is a time of crisis. Oil prices will fluctuate but not collapse.

ChrisMarks, Boca Raton, USA

This is exactly what capitalism is. Just because it isn't a white guy getting rich doesn't mean it's not capitalism.

Ashley, Calgary, Canada

"Does this not show that capitalism is finished?"

Don't be silly. It's mostly down to the stupidity of politicians. If they were more laissez-faire then there would be fewer things going wrong. Example: food prices sky rocketing because of biofuel laws.

Kay Tie, York,

Does this not show that capitalism is finished?

David Bridge, Southport, U.K