Don’t expect oil prices to remain at these low levels for long, says Byron King. Demand weakness for crude is temporary. And oil-producing nations cannot sustain their own economies unless oil prices are close to $100 a barrel. Byron says it could be time for investors to slowly build up a position in oil service stocks.

Canada’s consumer price inflation rose 2.2% year-over-year in May, edging ahead as the Bank of Canada signaled it would last week. The spike suggests Canada’s economy of is also sputtering alongside that of the United States, but soaring commodities costs just may help our northern neighbor skirt recession.

Once they started going long on oil it was fairly easy to perpetuate the run… all they have to do is buy at the ask price and oil just keeps going up and up.

T. Boone Pickens is a major oil guy. He became successful buying up oil and gas companies and trading energy for his fund, BP Capital. And now he’s forecasting $150 oil.

The number of OPEC countries has dropped to 12 from 13 after Indonesia an OPEC member since 1962, has announced it will leave the oil producers’ consortium due falling oil production. This from Bloomberg:

Indonesia, the only OPEC member in Southeast Asia, will pull out of the group as aging fields and declining production force the region’s biggest economy to boost imports.

Oil prices gained a dollar today to approach last week’s record high of $133 a barrel after Nigerian rebels blew up a pipeline belonging to Royal Dutch Shell, forcing it to cut production. This from the Financial Times:

Crude prices jumped on Monday in electronic trading as news of the attack broke, but analysts said the impact on prices spilled over into Tuesday, when exchanges on both side of the Atlantic re-opened after the long weekend.

Earlier this month, I questioned whether the recent spike in oil prices was a potential bubble. The price of crude has more than doubled in a year and there are some reasonable doubts whether oil can maintain these levels.

I don’t believe nuclear energy is the solution to this problem, at least not in its current form. The dirty secret of the nuclear industry is that we still don’t have an adequate waste disposal system. While carbon dioxide pollution may let New Yorkers grow palm trees, radioactive waste will kill you.

Pemex better start exploring for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico or its going to pump out all its reserves in less than ten years. Mexican President Felipe Calderon went on national television last night in Mexico and told his countrymen (in Spanish, we presume), “We have to act now because we’re running out of time and out of oil.”

Drillers found oil in my home state in 1943. The Sunniland trend in South Florida has produced about 110 million barrels so far. And the Big Cypress National Preserve produces about 730,000 barrels of oil per year.