Futures in light sweet crude oil are traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). A trader can open an account with a CFTC registered commodity brokerage firm and with proper margin funding for the account begin a futures crude oil trading program.

Crude oil is the world’s most actively traded commodity, and the NYMEX Division light, sweet crude oil futures contract is the world’s most liquid forum for crude oil trading, as well as the world’s largest-volume futures contract trading on a physical commodity. Because of its excellent liquidity and price transparency, the contract is used as a principal international pricing benchmark.

For those seeking additional risk management and trading opportunities in the energy sector options on the futures contract are offered as well as trading in ; calendar spread options; crack spread options on the pricing differential of heating oil futures and crude oil futures, and gasoline futures and crude oil futures; and average price options.

The futures crude oil contract trades in units of 1,000 barrels, and the delivery point is Cushing, Oklahoma, which is also accessible to the international spot markets via pipelines. The contract provides for delivery of several grades of domestic and internationally traded foreign crudes, and serves the diverse needs of the physical market.

For additional information you should consult with your commodity broker or head on over to the (NYMEX) New York Mercantile Exchange website. Trading futures crude oil is a fast paced and exciting speculative activity and is not for the faith hearted. Most certainly, you should enter the futures crude oil market only if you have unencumbered true risk capital along with deep pockets and the stomach for frequent intense market volatility.

How to invest in oil is a subject of great interest to quite a few traders in a world economy that is largely driven by the price and availability of products derived from products obtained from crude oil, like gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, plastics, and fertilizer.

It is hard to imagine a world in which these products are extremely expensive or not widely available but that could be the case within a few years.

The term Peak Oil is one that most investors are now fully aware of. Yet the meaning of peak oil is still widely misunderstood. Peak Oil does not mean that the world is nearing a time where no oil is available. Rather it refers to the rapidly developing situation with the production of oil where the major oil fields of the world are in a state of production decline. Even with new technology no major easy to access and cheap to extract oil fields have been recently discovered.

In other words, the easy to find, inexpensive to pump, oil discoveries have already been discovered. There are important new oil fields, like the huge field off the coast of Brazil, but the oil field is a very deep field indeed and the oil will be quite expensive to pump and transport to refineries.

After reaching the ocean floor some 6,000 feet down the Petros controlled oil field is still in vast reservoirs about 4,000 feet below the ocean floor. That oil will be very expensive to extract. It will probably be at least ten years before any oil is produced by the Petros team, even with their expertise in working with deep water oil fields, and that will happen only with much higher sustained prices than current prices for crude oil.

Here are crude oil price statistics which are updated throughout the trading day.

As one can readily see the price of crude oil is extremely volatile. While the slow down in demand caused by the (recession – depression?) is clearly evident the slowdown has not yet drastically reduced the demand for oil. A slowing of oil demand in the West is being at least partially offset by continued strong demand from India and China. While the economies of those two huge nations have slowed to a 5% to 6% growth rate that is still a lot of new energy demand in nations with such large populations. China and India together must have about 2.5 billion people, many who are demanding a more comfortable energy intensive life as their economies and incomes expand.

The supply of oil supplies over the next five years and beyond looks especially grim. Current lower prices are curtailing the exploration and development of not only new oil fields but of alternative energy sources. Energy conservation measures have cooled off as oil prices have declined. World oil production seems to have peaked at about 85 million barrels daily. With new oil production and exploration projects being shelved, at least for now while oil prices are relatively low, any increase in economic activity around the world can quickly lead to another oil price spike.

Crude oil price statistics will remain volatile and lively for many years to come. The probability of sharply higher prices by the end of 2009 remains high as the US Dollar will likely be under considerable downside pressure before then. The current “bailout” of the American economy and the printing of trillions of dollars of fiat currency by the US Treasury should insure that unhappy development. Since oil is still largely priced in US Dollars the fall of the Dollar will tend to increase the price of oil in Dollar terms.