The head of OPEC’s research division is quoted as saying that a $60-$65 price per barrel of oil is fair: “A price of $60 to $65 is appropriate for consumers and producers, because it boosts means of investment in the oil industry in light of growing demand for oil in the coming years.”
Interesting that he implies that the oil industry needs that price level to maintain production. At the end of 2004, the OPEC target price band was $22-$28. I wonder where producers found money for investment back them? At any rate, the desired oil price has doubled in less than three years. Call it inflation.
If these analysts are correct, $60-$65 will soon seem cheap:

The $100-a-barrel oil that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said would prevail by 2009 may be only a few months away.
Jeffrey Currie, a London-based commodity analyst at the world’s biggest securities firm, says $95 crude is likely this year unless OPEC unexpectedly increases production, and declining inventories are raising the chances for $100 oil. Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets predicts $100 a barrel as soon as next year.

It appears we are going to have an inappropriate problem on our hands.

I’m not real good at mathematics, but this supply and demand equation doesn’t look good:
“The IEA [International Energy Agency] predicted demand would rise by an average 2.2% a year between 2007 and 2012, up from previous estimates of 2%.”
+
“At the same time it predicted production from oil cartel Opec would fall, slipping by 2m bpd in 2009, while it also cut supply forecasts for non-Opec countries by 800,000 bpd.”
=
High energy prices ???
You can currently read the entire report here (.pdf). From the Executive Summary:

Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010, with OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012. A stronger demand outlook, together with project slippage and geopolitical problems has led to downward revisions of OPEC spare capacity by 2 mb/d in 2009. Despite an increase in biofuels production and a bunching of supply projects over the next few years, OPEC spare capacity is expected to remain relatively constrained before 2009 when slowing upstream capacity growth and accelerating non-OECD demand once more pull it down to uncomfortably low levels.

I think it’s safe to assume that in forecasting, the IEA is going to err on the side of a rosy projection. It wouldn’t be prudent for the organization to generate economic panic. So if the IEA is warning about “uncomfortably low” excess capacity, I worry that it could be even worse, with consumers soon facing an uncomfortable financial situation due to fuel costs.

I sometimes wonder how closely President Bush monitors what’s going on in the world. Does he really live in a bubble? Or is that a superficial myth spun by his critics.
I got another little insight yesterday watching CNN. Congressman Duncan Hunter was being interviewed and shared a recent exchange with the President:

HUNTER: Well, he [Bush] is — he has not built the fence. I wrote that bill in October. It was passed by the Senate by a vote of 80-19. It was passed by the House overwhelmingly. That extends a double border fence 854 miles — mandates its extension across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
I checked the other day and the administration has only built 13 miles of the 854 miles.
. . .
MALVEAUX: Have you talked to the president about this?
HUNTER: Yes, I have. I informed him the other day that it was only 13 miles. He expressed surprise at that.
. . .
MALVEAUX: Did he know there was only 13 miles?
Did he know?
HUNTER: It’s only 13 miles. No, he thought it was more than that.
And who knows?
I’m sure that the Department of Homeland Security has been telling him that things are great in terms of construction of that fence.
But the fact —
MALVEAUX: But what did the what did the president think it was?
What did the president think the mileage was?
HUNTER: Well, he didn’t have a — he didn’t have a number. He just expressed surprise that it — that that little, only 13 miles, had been accomplished at that point.

In short, Mr. Bush didn’t have any idea what the status was of that crown jewel of right-wing immigration policy: the border fence.
Now I don’t expect a president to be on top of every project the federal government is doing. There are too many things to follow. But the discussion here involved an important dimension of what was allegedly Bush’s top legislative priority at the time. Moreover, he had been touring the country (including the border) giving speeches highlighting border security.
Is it too much to expect that a president has a working knowledge of the background facts regarding a hot political issue? In this case, apparently, the answer is yes.

In the wake of the Scottish burning SUV catastrophe, one of the hot TV news obsessions is foreign-trained doctors, since six doctors from abroad have been detained or questioned in that investigation.
I was watching CNN today and one reporter mentioned that 37% of doctors in the United Kingdom are “qualified overseas”. That seems a little high to me. I was curios to compare it to the percentage in the United States.
According to this New England Journal of Medicine article (2005), 25% of the U.S. physician workforce is trained abroad (see Table 1). But according to the same study, 28% of UK doctors are international graduates. [This study cited 39,000 international doctors, while the CNN reporter said there are 89,000.]
That discrepancy aside, it’s evident there’s many international doctors practicing in the U.S., probably approaching the percentage in the U.K.
So the question lies ready to be explored by the enterprising mind of a worry-wort American reporter: “Could it happen here? Could your doctor be part of an al Qaeda sleeper cell?”

Last week MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski created a stir (and earned bonus points with me) for refusing to read the Paris Hilton release story on the air:

[Note the video has already received 1.5 million hits.]
TVNewser notes that Ms. Brzezinski’s rebellion has earned her widespread acclaim.
If so many people apparently did not want hear the Hilton “news” one wonders why MSNBC and all the other TV news stations were hyping it so much.
In a related note Joe Scarborough is apparently making the move from Scarborough Country to Morning Joe a permanent one. In the clip above, Scarborough suggests one of the reasons he’s for this is because he won’t be forced to do all that “HollyWeird” stuff. Good for him if he’s found a way to avoid doing tabloid TV.