A DESPERATION MOVE THAT DIDN’T WORK: Oil Prices Climb Back to Pre-Reserve Release Levels. “Crude raced higher Tuesday as energy bulls pushed Nymex oil back toward the $100-a-barrel mark, prices last seen before world governments said they would release crude from their reserves last month.”

Note this take: “It would be like intervention in the currency markets in the 1980s. The intended purpose was to psychologically drive down prices and every time they intervened it almost expressed their desperation…it would be like putting gasoline on a burning fire.” Or crude oil, anyway.