There's more to $ 120 oil than speculation

So there we were, dancing on the doorstep of $ 120. When we last discussed oil prices in this space, crude was crossing the $ 100-a-barrel milestone. That was less than four months ago. Crude futures barrelled through that threshold and have kept climbing, which wasn't supposed to happen. Our mounting economic downturn was supposed to curtail demand and drive prices down.
Our demand is falling -- the International Energy Agency predicts US oil consumption will slip by 2 % this year -- but the markets don't seem to have noticed. It's as if our recession is meaningless.

"All the conventional wisdom about oil markets is wrong," said Jeffrey Brown, an independent geologist in Dallas who studies energy market data. The idea that high oil prices are temporary is misleading, he added.
Don't let the pause in prices fool you. Brown sees a geometric progression of escalating prices, an upward spiral of devastating economic consequences. Brown is a proponent of peak oil, the theory that the world'soil supplies are declining. I called him, though, not to retread those arguments but because of his work developing the Export Land Model, a counterintuitive theory that says as oil prices rise, exports from oil-producing nations will fall.

Guess what that means for importers such as the US?
Here's what happens: as prices rise, oil-exporting countries benefit from an influx of petrodollars. That, in turn, spurs economic expansion, which in turn increases domestic oil consumption. As demand rises, more oil is devoted to meeting that domestic demand, leaving less oil to export. As exports fall, worldwide prices rise even more.
What Brown finds scarier than $ 120 oil is the latest projections from the International Energy Agency that forecast a 4.4 % rise in oil consumption this year from key emerging markets -- China, India, Russia and the Middle East.

Outpacing our demand
For the first time, the agency predicts, demand from those regions will outpace ours. In other words, the first steps of the Export Land Theory may be under way. Increases in world supplies have been relatively modest compared to this surging demand.
Because exports are essentially the oil that's left after domestic demand is met, exports will decline, Brown said.

Consider what he predicts will happen with Saudi Arabia, the second-largest supplier of oil to the US after Canada: If production remains at about its current level, its rising domestic consumption will claim all of its exports in about 20 years. He believes we'll soon begin seeing declines of about 5 % annually.
"When you look at the initial two years of decline, it's the scariest thing in the world," Brown said. "The very lifeblood of the Western economy is draining away before our eyes."

China, of course, is often blamed for the increase in global oil demand, given its huge population and emerging economy. Its consumption will rise almost 5 % this year, according to the agency. So will India, which by year end will be using more oil than is produced by Venezuela annually.
The agency predicts a larger rise -- almost 6 % -- in the Middle East, a region that for years produced much of the world's oil, yet consumed little. Newer fields such as Angola are adding to supply, but the increases won't be enough to offset declines already under way from countries such as Mexico, the third-largest US oil supplier, Brown said.

Short-term relief possible
We may, of course, see oil prices ease in the short term. Certainly, commodities have become an attractive haven for hedge funds fleeing the weak dollar. The more the dollar falls in world markets, the higher oil is likely to go.
The weak dollar, though, doesn't explain the prolonged rise of oil prices during the past few years. As crude bounces around in the $ 115 to $ 120 range, we can debate the role of speculative trading and currency rates. We can talk of bubbles, we can argue about whether global production has peaked, but we can't deny the basic supply and demand problem inherent in the International Energy Agency's forecast.

Speculators see the trends, too. They read the agency's forecasts.
The message here is simple: We have to share the world. Other countries want a piece of the living standard we've enjoyed for decades. For us, that means $ 120 isn't a spike, it's just another milestone on oil's upward journey.
Let's talk in a few more months.