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.

US truckers have started an ad hoc protest across the country over recent hikes in fuel prices, reports AP.

Some truckers, on CB radios and trucking Web sites, had called for a strike Tuesday to protest the high cost of diesel fuel, saying the action might pressure President Bush to stabilize prices by using the nation’s oil reserves. But the protests were scattered because because major trucking companies were not on board and there did not appear to be any central coordination.