Ölpreis in New York auf Allzeithoch: 41,40 Dollar

Früher ein Witz. Heute kann man nur noch bedingt lachen.

Wie verdopple ich den Wert meines Jaguars? Klar, einmal Volltanken.

gruss

Hier eine Kolumne von einer arabischen Wirtschaftswebsite. Ist leider auf Englisch - immerhin besser als Arabisch. :-)

Der Autor Peter J. Cooper vertritt die These, dass der Ölpreis noch weiter steigen wird, da die OPEC derzeit nicht wesentlich mehr Öl fördern könne, Russland ebenfalls seine Förderkapazitäten erreicht hat und terroristische Angriffe im Nahen Osten jederzeit die bereits voll ausgelasteten Förderkapazitäten treffen können.

Sargon

http://www.ameinfo.com/news/Detailed/39561.html

Will oil prices double this summer?

At the end of last week Russian oil producers threw in the towel saying they could not deliver any more oil. Oil prices spiked to the highest levels in 21 years. But this may just be the start of an old fashioned oil crisis.

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Over the past 30 years the world has been through several major oil shocks, or oil crises in which the cost of a barrel of oil suddenly shot up causing consumer and asset price inflation, higher interest rates, and then an economic downturn or outright recession.

Is that where we are suddenly heading in this optimistic summer of 2004 when all the world's economies are growing again after a major post-Millennium slowdown?

Certainly capital markets voted with their feet last week, and investors headed to the exit doors. But this may just a sign of things to come.

One statement earlier last week from Opec sent a chill down the spine of market watchers. This was a declaration from the oil cartels' president that there was nothing Opec could do about rising prices in current circumstances.

For those who respect the Saudi Arabians as the great swing producers of the oil market this is very sobering. If Opec can not release enough oil to satisfy the thirst of an expanding world economy led by China and perhaps India, then who can?

Russia? We got the answer on Friday last week. The Russians are up to 9.3 million barrels per day, and can add no more supply. They are at their physical limit.

Add in very real threats of supply disruption in the Middle East – and we saw Iraq exports dip by 500,000 barrels per day last week due to another sabotage incident, albeit just for a few days – and you have a very precarious supply and demand equation.

Now what can happen to reduce demand to meet available supply? Answer: higher oil prices.

Oil prices will therefore rise to such a level that the global economy contracts and the supply and demand equation is in balance. The mechanism involved in depressing global oil demand is consumer and asset price inflation caused by high oil prices which will necessitate higher interest rates.

In the interim period the question of how high oil prices go actually depends on how long the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates at their present ridiculously low levels. It was, after all, excessively low interest rates that sent demand for oil to present unsustainable levels in the first place.

Given that this is a US Presidential election year, and the Fed has no desire to dampen this year's economic success story, we might see oil prices surge a lot higher before the inevitable medicine of high interest rates is taken. And the higher oil prices rise the more aggressive those interest rate rises will have to be.

On the other hand, in order for the oil producers to invest in new capacity to meet rising real global demand for oil then we will probably continue to see oil prices well above the depressed levels of the 1990s. Otherwise, there will just be another supply and demand crunch, and another business slowdown or recession.

So higher oil prices are probably here to stay, and today's shock headline might be tomorrow's planning baseline. In the meantime, oil prices could double this summer.

Der folgende Artikel erschien in der New York Times von gestern. Paul Krugman ("Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University") ist ein bekannter Kritiker der Politik von George W. Bush.

In seiner Kolumne macht er dieselben Bedenken geltend wie in dem anderen von mir zitierten Artikel: Seiner Meinung nach erzwingt eine bis an die Kapazitätsgrenze ausgelastete Ölförderung höhere Preise und es wird geraume Zeit dauern, bis diese über die Erschließung neuer Vorkommen das Angebot entsprechend erhöhen kann. Mit einer Stagflation wie in den 70ern rechnet er jedoch nicht, da eine Lohn-Preis-Spirale wie damals nicht zu erwarten sei.

Sargon

http://www.nyt.com

A Crude Shock

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 14, 2004

So far, the current world oil crunch doesn't look at all like the crises of
1973 or 1979. That's why it's so scary.

The oil crises of the 1970's began with big supply disruptions: the Arab oil
embargo after the 1973 Israeli-Arab war and the 1979 Iranian revolution. This
time, despite the chaos in Iraq, nothing comparable has happened — yet.
Nonetheless, because of rising demand that is led by soaring Chinese
consumption, the world oil market is already stretched tight as a drum, and
crude oil prices are $12 a barrel higher than they were a year ago. What if
something really does go wrong?

Let me put it a bit differently: the last time oil prices were this high, on
the eve of the 1991 gulf war, there was a lot of spare capacity in the world,
so there was room to cope with a major supply disruption if it happened. This
time there isn't.

The International Energy Agency estimates the world's spare oil production
capacity at about 2.5 million barrels per day, almost all of it in the Persian
Gulf region. It also predicts that global oil demand in 2004 will be, on
average, 2 million barrels per day higher than in 2003. Now imagine what will
happen if there are more successful insurgent attacks on Iraqi pipelines, or,
perish the thought, instability in Saudi Arabia. In fact, even without a supply
disruption, it's hard to see where the oil will come from to meet the growing
demand.

But wait: basic economics says that markets deal handily with excesses of
demand over supply. Prices rise, producers have an incentive to produce more
while consumers have an incentive to consume less, and the market comes back
into balance. Won't that happen with oil?

Yes, it will. The question is how long it will take, and how high prices will
go in the meantime.

To see the problem, think about gasoline. Sustained high gasoline prices lead
to more fuel-efficient cars: by 1990 the average American vehicle got 40
percent more miles per gallon than in 1973. But replacing old cars with new
takes years. In their initial response to a shortfall in the gasoline supply,
people must save gas by driving less, something they do only in the face of
very, very high prices. So very, very high prices are what we'll get.

Increasing production capacity takes even longer than replacing old cars. Also,
major new discoveries of oil have become increasingly rare (although in my last
column on the subject, I forgot about two large fields in Kazakhstan, one
discovered in 1979, the second in 2000).

Petroleum engineers continue to squeeze more oil out of known fields, but a
repeat of the post-1973 experience, in which there was a big increase in non
OPEC production, seems unlikely.

So oil prices will stay high, and may go higher even in the absence of more bad
news from the Middle East. And with more bad news, we'll be looking at a real
crisis — one that could do a lot of economic damage. Each $10 per barrel
increase in crude prices is like a $70 billion tax increase on American
consumers, levied through inflation. The spurt in producer prices last month
was a taste of what will happen if prices stay high. By the way, after the 1979
Iranian revolution world prices went to about $60 per barrel in today's prices.

Could an oil shock actually lead to 1970's-style stagflation — a combination of
inflation and rising unemployment? Well, there are several comfort factors,
reasons we're less vulnerable now than a generation ago. Despite the rise of
the S.U.V., the U.S. consumes only about half as much oil per dollar of real
G.D.P. as it did in 1973. Also, in the 1970's the economy was already primed
for inflation: given the prevalence of cost-of-living adjustments in labor
contracts and the experience of past inflation, oil price increases rapidly fed
into a wage-price spiral. That's less likely to happen today.

Still, if there is a major supply disruption, the world will have to get by
with less oil, and the only way that can happen in the short run is if there is
a world economic slowdown. An oil-driven recession does not look at all far
fetched.

It is, all in all, an awkward time to be pursuing a foreign policy that
promises a radical transformation of the Middle East — let alone to be botching
the job so completely.