The fuel spot price "super spike" collapse

I have continued monitoring the Singapore spot prices of international bunker fuels (jet used in aircraft and residual fuel oil (RFO) used in ships) in US$ and NZ$. The following four graphs show the results for this decade including November 2008 (see previous post for data sources). The second and fourth of the graphs are indexed with a base on 100 in January 2000.

The term "super spike" in relation to oil price movements was reported on 21 May 2008 by the International Herald Tribune to have been used by a Goldman Sachs analyst, Arjun Murti, who was predicting that the price of oil could go as high as US$200 and would stay above US$100 into 2011. Bloomberg reported on 6 May 2008 that Murti first used the term "super spike" in March 2005.

Murti's latest views on the price of oil were covered in a 12 December 2008 post NEW on the Alphaville weblog from the Financial Times.