The Economist has a good cartoonist, who does most, maybe all of the cartoons in the mag. He is pretty good. He did the cover this week. The cartoon shows two beefy guys doing the pistols at dawn dueling scene. You know, standing back to back, pistols in hand, on a word from a second they will step forward a few paces and then turn and fire at each other. Only instead of pistols, these guys are holding gasoline pump nozzles. They both have mean and nasty expressions on their faces. One is an Arab sheik, flowing white tribal robes, red and white checked kaffeyeh. The other is an oil field roughneck, blue jeans, wind breaker, beer belly, and safety yellow hard hat, with an American flag decal on it.
Inside the magazine, the cover story tells us that oil has dropped from $100 a barrel last summer to $70 a barrel now. They also said that production cost of fracked North Dakota oil is $57 a barrel, so the price can fall a bit more and the Bakken will still be profitable.