Speculators (I believe) along with OPEC are trying to find the tipping point by trying to get the most for a barrel of oil without actually ruining the economy(aside from all of the other factors affecting). Lets face it if no one can afford to drive to work or put food on the table, then how much will oil be worth? Oh, I believe you are correct in assuming that the price of oil will continue to increase, but the current situation is speculation. Consider the last spike in crude oil prices. Did OPEC say it was reducing production? Was there any major threat to oil supply? was there a surge in demand? No. A representative of the Iranian Government said words to the effect that if the U.S. or Israel were to attack Iran then there could be no limit to the price of crude oil. Blam! The prices took off. Simplistic, but pretty obvious from this laymans point of view.
That’s why they still agree to sell oil at the futures price rather than set their own price. They need the futures market to do price discovery. Now, when that “tipping point” is identified, what can happen? Maybe OPEC then want to sell oil price $1 below that tipping point regardless what NYMEX trades - maximizing revenues while preventing full-blown demand destruction. Maybe, maybe not. But anyway, one thing is certain. They will never want to sell their oil at $60 again even speculators push NYMEX back to $60. If you understand the logic here, NYMEX oil price cannot crash. It can only plateau. If congress agrees to drill such that we dont need to depend on OPEC, then the story is different. Let me repeat again, in the past, the world has a lot of spare capacity, such that no oil country produces more than the spare and thus every one of them has to trade using the futures price. Now, they dont need to. The world spare capacity is 2million barrels per day and thus any oil country which produces more than 2 million in fact can set the price and the world still needs to buy from them. NYMEX is just a “puppet”
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