"There is no firm number for what constitutes a fair oil price because the factors that are affecting the price are outside the context of supply and demand fundamentals." Kuwaiti oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahed al-Sabah said that the high cost of oil was not the result of supply/demand fundamentals but geopolitical concerns.

"Twelve pirates armed with machine guns, AK47 rifles and sidearms boarded the tanker off Mogadishu during daylight. "The pirates are armed and they will not hesitate to fire to stop ships." Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Centre of the London-based International Maritime Bureau, explaining how a dozen heavily armed pirates have hijacked a UAE-registered oil tanker along with 19 Filipino crew members off the coast of Somalia.

"Taking the contango on forward energy price curves into account, spot prices from now on must post spectacular performances in order to render the net return on cost of roll-overs attractive. At the end of 2006 "numerous investors will be disappointed to see that, despite an increase of $10/barrel they achieved no return, or even a negative one." Frederic Lasserre, head of Societe Generale's Paris-based commodities research team which raised its 2006 forecasts for light, sweet NYMEX crude from $56.5/barrel to $59/barrel.