Factors often responsible for current price increases include renewed geopolitical concerns in the Middle East, declining excess oil production capacity, production cuts agreed by the Organization for the Export of Petroleum Countries, the devaluation of the US dollar against other major currencies, the increase in demand from growth countries and the notable expansion of provisional transactions on the futures market of the petrolium. Traders and speculators can profit from these changes in value through buying or selling crude oil CFDs (Kanter, 2008). In the long term, crude oil is likely to follow strict trend lines, if you are able to classify a trend appropriately, then you can make gains from such movements by selling oil prices "short" or buying "long". It is a fact that due to the war against Iraq, oil prices have increased enormously. If we look back at the past, it is evident that immediately after the attack on Iraq there was a sudden increase in oil prices per barrel. As a result of the increase in oil prices, an increase in inflation has been observed. It is a common phenomenon that rising oil prices lead to rising prices of other commodities. An end to the problems in Iraq would stabilize oil prices while avoiding volatility due to political concerns. The "right price" of oil is currently around 25 dollars a barrel and can fluctuate in a "tunnel 3" of 5 dollars in diameter depending on the evolution of stocks, economic growth or compliance with quotas by OPEC countries ( Mufson, 2008). Empirical studies show that the price of oil is relatively timely and independent of OPEC's strategy: OPEC does not set the price of oil; the market follows the trend of OPEC and at the margin, sensitive to price o...... middle of paper ......n over 11.6 million barrels per day of oil. At today's price of more than $100 a barrel, that's more than $1 billion a day being sent abroad, much of it to politically unstable countries. Works Cited Kanter, J. (2008). OPEC warns against military business. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10Mufson, S. (2008). Offshore drilling debate in the United States. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 26, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_offshoreWilliams, J. L. (2007). History and analysis of crude oil prices. Retrieved January 7, 2009, from http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm.Caffentzis, G. (2008). The peak oil complex, commodity fetishism and class struggle. Rethinking Marxism vol. 20. Pages 313–320.Cooper, J.C.B. (2003). Price elasticity of demand for crude oil: estimates for 23 countries. OPEC Review Vol. 27 no. (1). pp. 1–8.