This Week in Heating Oil March 12: Niger is Not Nigeria
It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint with great accuracy why oil prices go up or down—even after the fact. On Monday, we reported on one instance last month where one highly unusual factor definitely contributed to higher oil prices: bad geography.
On February 18, oil traders mistaking Niger for Nigeria began buying up crude oil contracts on the expectation that political upheaval in oil-rich Nigeria would put a major dent in world crude supplies. Once the major error became clear, the buying frenzy subsided a bit, but subsequent days’ retail prices of heating oil and gasoline increased, at least partially as a result of the oil traders’ mixing up the two African nations.
Oil traders, we’ve got something for you:
(image: segue.atlas.uiuc.edu)
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