Soros on oil

Soaring oil prices are increasingly the result of speculation, financier George Soros said in an interview published Monday.

The billionaire investor said the money pouring into the oil market increasingly had the look of a bubble, but that it would not burst until both the United States and Britain were knocked into a recession.

"Speculation ... is increasingly affecting the price," Soros was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. "The price has this parabolic shape that is characteristic of bubbles."

But the cost of oil — which briefly reached new record highs of more than US$135 a barrel in trading Thursday — was unlikely to fall dramatically until the U.S. and Britain economies began contracting, the paper quoted Soros as saying.