$100 a Barrel? Maybe Chicken Little Was Right
Yes, oil has reached the magic number, $100/barrel. However, as the Angry Bear notes, since 2001, the United States had less to do with breaking the price glass ceiling than many shrilly declare.
Don't believe me? Check out this graph, which shows flat US imports of both crude and refined fuels since 2001. Had our profligate nation been wholly responsible, this $100 benchmark would have been reached much, much earlier.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised by this, but I shouldn't be. After all, a few years back something monumental may have happened to oil supplies. I do wish the Angry Bear would have shown worldwide delivery of oil, not just national. Such an analysis might have through the smokescreen of Byzantine exceptions OPEC members use to inflate their own production numbers.
(OPEC production allowances each year are based upon production numbers from prior years. Thus, if, say, Saudi Arabia delivers a few million barrels to Qatar, and Qatar then sells this same oil back to Saudi Arabia in the same year allowing the Saudis to then put the oil on a ship, the Saudis can list both deliveries, the one to Qatar and the one to the ship, as production. They don't have to declare their imports, thus making an actual determination of how much they extract from their wells difficult.)
Back to the expensive barrel: Sure, the US imports were flat, but I'll put a small wager out there, and say that worldwide imports of ground-extracted crude is also flat.
But that's not what we're hearing, is it? "While daily price rises have been blamed on unrest in oil-supplying countries such as Nigeria, an underlying and significant factor has been an increase in demand from China and India." Other sources add poor weather in Mexico's fields to the list of blame.
Red herrings, all. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I say excuses because in the decades prior to today, the world has seen unrest, bad weather and consumption competition, but has never seen oil prices this high in real dollars.
These citations, this laundry list of excuses, addresses only specific supply/demand hiccups and avoids the Uncomfortable and Difficult Overlying Possibility; that a planetary peak in oil supply verses demand must be substantively addressed with real policy change, not excuses.
Chicken Little gets a bad rap; but sometimes the sky really falls.
Don't believe me? Check out this graph, which shows flat US imports of both crude and refined fuels since 2001. Had our profligate nation been wholly responsible, this $100 benchmark would have been reached much, much earlier.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised by this, but I shouldn't be. After all, a few years back something monumental may have happened to oil supplies. I do wish the Angry Bear would have shown worldwide delivery of oil, not just national. Such an analysis might have through the smokescreen of Byzantine exceptions OPEC members use to inflate their own production numbers.
(OPEC production allowances each year are based upon production numbers from prior years. Thus, if, say, Saudi Arabia delivers a few million barrels to Qatar, and Qatar then sells this same oil back to Saudi Arabia in the same year allowing the Saudis to then put the oil on a ship, the Saudis can list both deliveries, the one to Qatar and the one to the ship, as production. They don't have to declare their imports, thus making an actual determination of how much they extract from their wells difficult.)
Back to the expensive barrel: Sure, the US imports were flat, but I'll put a small wager out there, and say that worldwide imports of ground-extracted crude is also flat.
But that's not what we're hearing, is it? "While daily price rises have been blamed on unrest in oil-supplying countries such as Nigeria, an underlying and significant factor has been an increase in demand from China and India." Other sources add poor weather in Mexico's fields to the list of blame.
Red herrings, all. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I say excuses because in the decades prior to today, the world has seen unrest, bad weather and consumption competition, but has never seen oil prices this high in real dollars.
These citations, this laundry list of excuses, addresses only specific supply/demand hiccups and avoids the Uncomfortable and Difficult Overlying Possibility; that a planetary peak in oil supply verses demand must be substantively addressed with real policy change, not excuses.
Chicken Little gets a bad rap; but sometimes the sky really falls.