oil price

Today news said that oil price hikes until 108USD a barrel, a new record after it was priced around 80USD. Really a painful news for oil importer country. But is this price hike caused by unbalance of demand and supply?
Several months ago OPEC said it was not about supply and demand, it was speculation. Maybe it was right.
Other opinion is about the USD value itself, which is used as oil currency. USD is falling down until less than 0.6EUR each. USD also collapse against other important currency such as YEN. Unfortunately IDR got no advantage of this crisis, there was an easy rule for IDR, if USD is strong, then IDR is weak; if USD is weak, then IDR is also weak. It is a truly.

So, is oil price hike or USD devaluated?

But there is a nice news for Indonesian, surely there won't be fuel price hike until 2009 election. SBY is not stupid enough to face 2009 election in public outcry!

Sometimes I got confused while thinking about this situation, OPEC member, oil exporter country, could not take any advantage of oil price hike. In my stupid opinion, most of Indonesia's oilfield is operated by multinational companies who take the most profit from oil price hike. If I were the owner of multinational companies, it is better to let this situation happens. Why the companies must increase their production, which means more variable cost, when it potentially decrease the oil price. This condition, which is maybe maximizing profit, probably was already calculated using sophisticated OR formula on high end computer sets. So it is nice to keep this situation for the company.
Pertamina is trying to increase its daily production, recruiting many new officer and engineer, but maybe when the production is sufficient, the price will fall down, overproduction happens, and so on. However it is not easy to face the Seven Sister or their descendants, they are controlling all oilfield over the world, even the countries and their politicians. Moreover these whole thing are worsened by corruptions in Pertamina itself.