Thank Chris - I hadn't realized that there were landslides - I did know production was down, but not why..

Yes, there have been a series of things, in various countries, leading to an immediate shortage of oil, but things should get back to normal soon... I don't expect to see oil back in the twenty dollar range though...

Here are some facts that I found today:
The Gulf:
The percentage of the Gulf of Mexico's daily oil output that is offline in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan remains at 25.07% while the percentage of natural-gas offline is 12.31%, according to a report from the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

Argentina:
(d) Argentina production for the three months and nine months ended
September 30, 2004, is estimated to have been reduced as the
result of a labor strike and problems at a major oil loading
facility by 162 MBbls of oil and 129 MMcf of gas, or 183 MBOE and
527 MBbls of oil and 429 MMcf of gas, or 598 MBOE, respectively.

MBbls - thousand barrels
MMcf - million cubic feet
MBOE - thousand barrels of oil equivalent

Keddington oil production was lost for 38 days due to mechanical problems.

Nigeria:
The Nigeria Labour Congress branded Anglo-Dutch giant Shell an "enemy of the Nigerian people," and called for action against the company. Shell is the leading oil company in Nigeria. They had a 4 day labor strike.

Norway:
labor problems among Norwegian oil workers.

And we all know what's going on in Iraq...

It also looks like the OPEC nations will be boosting production to cover some of these other problem areas...
On October 11, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi said Saudi Arabia currently produces 9.5 million barrels of crude oil a day, and is getting ready to increase production by 1.5 million barrels a day.

The oil ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait said on the same day that the two countries were going to raise the daily crude oil production by 300,000 barrels and 200,000 barrels.

The daily crude oil production of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has reached 30 million barrels, much higher than 27 million barrels - the daily production limit of OPEC.

Canie