Oil price bubble ’set to burst’

Sydney – Record oil prices this week are evidence of a speculative market bubble that is set to burst in the next 12 months and make the hi-tech crash of 2000 “look like a picnic”, business publisher Steve Forbes said Tuesday.
The price of light sweet crude topped $70 a barrel on Monday as Hurricane Katrina headed for the US Gulf Coast, which accounts for about a quarter of US oil output.

Forbes, editor-in-chief of the influential Forbes business magazine, said inflation and increased demand from China and India only accounted for a small part of the price hike from $25-$30 a barrel three years ago.

“The rest of it is sheer bubble speculation,” Forbes told reporters in Sydney at the launch of a business conference.

News24