We may differ on the details, but I think it's beyond dispute that the petroleum market is being gamed as outrageously as the California energy market in the Enron years. Collusion doesn't have to be explicit or visible--prosecutable--to happen, it just requires each player to monitor OPEC prices and adjust their own in lockstep. This business of anticipating future price increase is a way of making extra profit during the lag time, kind of analogous to the way banks play the float. You sure don't see the oil companies lowering prices in advance of a decline--the trend is ever upward.

It continues to amaze me [irony] that there can be a global standard price for a barrel of oil. Extraction costs vary wildly around the globe--why isn't the lowest-cost producer cleaning up with the lowest prices? The answer is: Price-fixing cartel.