Happy Monday -- Oil & Gold Charts & News You Can Use

And here is the news ...

Oil Rises as Saudi Plan to Pump More Fails to Ease Nigeria Supply Concern Oil rose to within $3 of a record on speculation Saudi Arabia's output increase may not raise global supply after an Chevron Corp. pipeline was blown up in Nigeria and a North Sea platform evacuated.

XX Sean’s note – I’m covering Nigeria in my new oil report. What a debacle!

OPEC president says sees no demand for more oil
Oil producers cannot pump more without demand for extra supply, and at the moment that demand does not exist, OPEC President Chakib Khelil said on Monday.

Speculators Are Largest Oil Contract Buyers, Doubling Share, Panel Says Speculators became the largest players in oil futures markets, nearly doubling their share in the past eight years as prices rose to records, in a ``radical shift'' for the market, according to a congressional committee.

“This raises troubling concerns about whether the oil future prices have become delinked from underlying supply and demand fundamentals and whether the commodities markets have become a casino for unscrupulous speculators who profit at the expense of the American people,'” Representative John Dingell, the committee chairman, said in an e-mailed statement.

XX – note -- If the government focuses on this, it could spell trouble for commodity ETFs. I'll watch these developments closely. Congress should heed Sanford C Bernstein analysts Andrew Keen, Ben Dell, Neil McMahon and Hugh Wynne, who wrote in a June 20 note: “Every crisis needs a culprit. Active speculation is a catalyst for market movements, not an underlying cause.''

Oil Refiner Insiders Buy Most Shares Since 2000 in Bet Crude Will Plummet Refinery executives are buying more of their own stock than at any time since 2000, prompting investors to bet that a retreat in oil will boost profits and reverse the biggest share decline in a decade.

Iran Supertankers Can Hold Five Months of Saudi Oil Pledge: Chart of Day Iranian supertankers now in the Persian Gulf could store the equivalent of five months worth of the additional crude oil Saudi Arabia pledged to pump to curb prices, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

OTHER NEWS

Uranium Soon Fetches $90 as India Reactors Drive Global Demand
The uranium industry's worst year is about to collide with a nuclear construction program in India and China that rivals the ones undertaken during the oil crisis of the 1970s.

The result is likely to be a 58 percent rebound in uranium to $90 a pound from $57 now, according to Goldman Sachs and Rio Tinto Group, the third-biggest mining company. Uranium plunged 57 percent in the past year as an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant that's the world's largest and faults shut down reactors in the U.K. and Germany.

Record Corn Prices Mean More Expensive Meat, Dairy
In the latest bout of food inflation, beef, pork, poultry and even eggs, cheese and milk are expected to get more expensive as livestock owners go out of business or are forced to slaughter more cattle, hogs, turkeys and chickens to cope with rocketing costs for corn-based animal feed.

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