There's still a while to go until the year end and even longer to go until the end of the Gregorian year (5th Jan 2009 on the Julian calender) as used by the Russian orthodox church................. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Tim in Scotland wrote:

There's still a while to go until the year end and even longer to go until the end of the Gregorian year (5th Jan 2009 on the Julian calender) as used by the Russian orthodox church.................

Yes, But I still don't believe that the barrel will reach 250$ or even 150 ...

long story short:

USD is up, € is down, the financial crisis is coming to an end in the States and the recession is now in Europe.
the bank of china has changed its strategy since last august and they are now buying dollars, thus increasing its value, in order to help their exporter which are not in a very good shape.
Markets are not really confident abt EUROPE and have been entranced by the veeery bright moves from POLSON and the FED, including their on going one with LEHMAN BROS.so money is going back stateside and speculators moves on raw material is ''old story'' for obvious reason for the time being.
Plus, everybody knows that the oil majors are still making an healthy profit with a barrel around 80$ ( except maybe in ALBERTA).
I don't see any reason for the barrel to resume its upward trend for the next couple of months....

BUT I have been proved permanently wrong in my analysis for the last year so just consider the above pure wishful thinking