Oil Price - Can airlines and motorist hope for a fall?

Jet Fuel (Kerosene) "Colonial Grade"

In 1974 when the "Oil shock" hit the West it would have been inconceivable that Brent Crude could hit $150 a barrel.  But it did as we now know to our cost!  With all the bad news from the recent past and current Eurozone problems one has to look very hard to find any comforting news at all. 

However I regularly check the IATA.org site to see what the jet-fuel price is doing and just recently it has started to drift down to a current US$130 a barrel.  That's 5.4% down on a month ago and a little down on a year ago.  The average jet fuel price to date this year is US$134.8 per barrel which, even if the average remains the same for the rest of 2012, still leaves global aviation with US$41 billion more to pay than last year's fuel bill.  (For IATA methodology please go to: 
http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/economics/fuel_monitor/Pages/methodology_impact.aspx ).

As an ex commodities futures trader and analyst I was also interested to see  the chart for 'spot' Brent Crude oil this week had formed an interesting pattern that chartists call a "double top".  This is usually interpreted as signaling a downturn in prices.   Given the linkage between Crude Oil prices and Jet-Fuel its not surprising that charts for the latter are showing similar patterns.

I am certainly not an expert "Chartist" these days,  but this week anyway, the signs are that the market may be turning down.  Oil industry market sentiment for the next week on TradingCharts.com is 64% bearish but this is a short term view in what is a fairly volatile marketplace.  As a famous American 20th century banker once sagely said: "the only thing certain about commodity prices is that they will fluctuate".  But for the present let's hope the chart is signalling a down trend!  As evidenced by both BA and Lufthansa's company losses, airlines could well do with a drop in their fuel bills!