Driving the markets
Whilst we see the bubbles burst and the Walls come down, and large parts of the Western economies that based their
wealth on cheap energy and cheap credit are threatened to come to a grinding halt, also the oil price is on its way
down, as can be expected.
But something else seems be going on here as well.
The market has been well supplied for quite some time, as was adamantly repeated by OPEC-dignitaries, but nevertheless there were those politicians and statesmen, who kept calling for more production, “to balance the markets”.
With the oil price reaching record-high, already there was this uncomfortable feeling that things were being driven for a different reason, with a kind of hidden agenda. The oil-price rally this summer had little to do with supply and demand, it had much more to do with “who is in charge”, which, to a certain (large) extent the financial markets won.
Now we see a correction of the oil-market, with prices going down almost as fast as they went up, all on the basis of what seem realistic arguments of contracting economies and reduced demand.
But again there is this feeling that, above all the mess that is being created financially, which some economist already call “the great robbery”, there are those parties that are now, very consciously, driving down the price of oil. And whilst to a certain extent this will be good for importing countries, and for many people that were under threat of “energy-poverty”, it is also an instrument to strongly reduce the income of the oil-producing countries, of which quite a few currently have a tense relationship with the remnants of the crumbling empires of the moment.
One side effect is that many of the mega-projects that are currently in the planning-stage, and are based on an
oil-price between 70 and 100 dollar, may become unviable soon. With the current horrendous costs, a diving oil-price
may be deadly for many projects that are being planned in Russia, the Middle East, Far East and South East, as well
as in Latin America.
And whilst this may be a good thing, as many projects were being set up on the basis of projections and
mind-sets that were clearly antiquated, the whole things is also an instrument of “containment” of those
regimes that are not “friendly” to those pulling the strings in the financial- and trading markets.
And with many of the new projects becoming unviable, especially refinery- and petchem-projects that were planned in the emerging regions, the shift of balance, that was going from West to East, is being stopped, or at least delayed for quite some time.
Whether the whole thing is a “set-up” or not, it is clear that it may have far-reaching repercussions in the global geo-strategic balance.
The good thing is that many of these projects would have vastly increased the global pollution, whilst we might have found out that many of them would not have been necessary, seen the reduction in demand and the urgent need to wean ourselves off from energy-intensive products as well as to leave the whole internal combustion-era behind us before we will have made life really impossible on this planet.
There is a growing consciousness about the side-effects, in pollution and other collateral damage, of the projects that are seemingly created to sustain our way of life, and ever more it becomes clear that we simply cannot afford to keep talking about emission-reductions whilst doing exactly the opposite.
Recently one commentator wrote: “what if climate-change is not linear?” What if it follows the same curve as our global emissions-curve, a J-curve? And what if it indeed takes about 30 years for the effects of the emissions to filter through and come back to us in the form of climate-change?
Well, it would mean we are just at the beginning of some major changes, just as the global economy started to take off in the mid-70ties. If we think this through, do we really think we can just keep going on with producing, driving and polluting and we will not pay the bill for it? Or our children?
So, next to starting to look at the real source of what is driving the markets, we may also re-consider the real need and necessity of many of the projects that may now be in danger due to the oil-price being driven down.
An interesting Update is awaiting you.
Alexander
Responses are welcome at Alexander@gas-oil-power.com
