I’ve been urging the Church to think about the implications of sharply rising oil prices for the past five years. And so I immediately pricked up my ears when I heard the news that crude oil futures had topped $100 a barrel for a brief time yesterday.

But there’s apparently less to the story than meets the eye.

According to the BBC:

“Stephen Schork, a former floor trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the editor of an oil market newsletter, said one floor trader bought 1,000 barrels, the smallest amount permitted, and sold it immediately for $99.40 at a $600 loss.

‘They absolutely overpaid,’ he told Radio Four’s Today Programme.

‘He paid $600 for the right to tell his grandchildren that he was the first in the world to buy $100 oil.'”

In other words, it was a “vanity trade”.

Now mind you, the $100 price point is mostly psychological. But as someone who’s been trying to point out to church planters that urban settings are going to have a rosier future in the long term than suburban ones will, crossing that barrier officially and for some sustained length of time will have the effect of getting the planters to pay attention for a bit at least.

Read the rest here.