Oil prices have plunged by a third since June. What happened?
Damned if I know. This is an extremely murky market. Information about supply is notoriously patchy. As for demand, people are writing dissertations about the mentality of mega-fund managers who plunge into securities like oil futures one day, only to bail en masse another.
But from from Wednesday's New York Times article, there are two factors driving the fall in oil prices:
1) The Saudis have opened their taps.
"We have worked very hard since June to bring prices to where they are now," [Saudi oil minister] Ali Al-Naimi told reporters Tuesday morning. "We have been very successful." Mr. Naimi was referring to a pledge Saudi Arabia made in June at a meeting of producers and consumers in Jeddah to keep pumping at full throttle to bring prices down. The kingdom is producing about 9.5 million barrels a day, 600,000 barrels a day more than its official OPEC quota.
(On Thursday, Naimi announced Saudi Arabia would maintain its higher-than-quota pumping in defiance of a recent OPEC decision to cut production.)
2) Demand in the developed countries is falling, partly because of slow or negative economic growth, partly because of consumer cutbacks in response to high prices.
What strikes me is this seems like the same old oil market: Prices are tied directly to economic growth, and the Saudis have the power to push down prices just by opening their taps. Not so long ago, peak-oil zealots were assuring us that the Saudis no longer had to capacity to push down prices. Well?
We've been down this road before. In past times of heightened prices, when words like "conservation" and "renewable" started to get kicked around in developed countries, the Saudis merely flooded the market (cheered on, no doubt, by many of the same folks now knocking around the White House). The last time this happened, we got the SUV.
Falling oil prices complicate things across the political spectrum. If prices keep plunging, what does that do to the GOP's "drill here, drill now" strategy?
More importantly, what does it do to the green agenda? Rhetoric about the "end of cheap oil" has driven much of the push behind everything from renewable energy sources to local food in recent years. What happens if oil settles in for a while at, say $50 per barrel?
Meanwhile, the OPEC nations themselves seem nervous about the prospect of a crash. Interestingly, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela -- all of whom are more or less hostile to the U.S. -- are pushing for production cuts. Good thing our dear friend Saudi Arabia is telling them to go to hell!
I think the message here is that the oil market is not our friend. We can't count on ever-escalating oil prices to bail us out on climate change, or rebuild robust local economies. These critical tasks are going to require hard political organizing no matter what, and they may have to take place in a climate of cheap(ish) oil.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
Comments
View as Flat
cjwirth Posted 11:51 am
13 Sep 2008
According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
Surviving Peak Oil: We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
cjwirth http://www.peakoilassociates.com
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:12 pm
13 Sep 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Colin Wright Posted 12:24 pm
13 Sep 2008
When the next supply crunch comes, we could well see prices of $200, $250, or $300. But again, the rise won't be steady and unending; we will again see a spike followed by a plunge--this time maybe back to $150.
Meanwhile, will oil at $100 be an occasion for sleepwalking or strategic regrouping? For policy makers, this is a time to think clearly about long-term measures to reduce demand pro-actively and support the development of renewable energy sources. For citizens, it is an opportunity to make the effort to change habits, buy a smaller car, and get involved in community Peak Oil prep work
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Russ Posted 12:50 pm
13 Sep 2008
More importantly, what does it do to the green agenda? Rhetoric about the "end of cheap oil" has driven much of the push behind everything from renewable energy sources to local food in recent years. What happens if oil settles in for a while at, say $50 per barrel?
I think the message here is that the oil market is not our friend. We can't count on ever-escalating oil prices to bail us out on climate change, or rebuild robust local economies. These critical tasks are going to require hard political organizing no matter what, and they may have to take place in a climate of cheap(ish) oil.
...this "peak oil zealot" can assure you, prices aren't going anywhere near $50, and there is nothing surprising about what prices have been doing lately.
Peak Oilers have long predicted that as Peak Oil takes hold, the effect on prices will be extreme short-term volatility within a general upward trend.
Two steps up, one step down, is an expected pattern.
You can compare it to the predicted weather effects of climate change: weather volatility, increasing incidence of extreme events including unusual "cold" manifestations, all within a general warming trend.
So these extreme price-weather events we've been seeing fit right in with the general climatic price increase.
As for which proximate factors have been playing their parts right now:
1. The increased Saudi production (after years of stagnation) has temporarily alleviated fears of an impending chronic shortage. It's too early to tell the nature of this increased production - could they have done this all along, like they always claimed they could? How long can they maintain this new level? Can it go up even further?
Or is this a temporary overachievement which will cause the post-Peak downward curve to be all the more steep?
(BTW, this recent increase only brings production back up toward the 9.6 mpd 2005 level. We're not yet in any brave new world of saudi prolificity by any means.)
2. There has been some "demand destruction", a fancy term for rationing by wealth. The poor have to choose between food and fuel, the middle class has to tighten its belt, while the fat rich continue their happy motoring.
Demand destruction can only go so far. Here especially a law of diminishing returns set in, as Jeff Vail wrote about in part one of his current Oil Drum series on geopolitical feedback loops. Demand this year has perhaps shown itself to be more elastic than many commentators expected. But as the low-hanging fruit is "destroyed", as gasoline consumers cut back on whatever consumption was truly discretionary, the remaining demand becomes increasingly inelastic.
So anyone who's expecting a similar demand response to the next price surge is likely to be disappointed.
3. To whatever extent speculators exacerbate the fundamentals-driven price fluctuations, we see here how much it's driven by perceptions and emotions. Just as for awhile they were fired up by hype like "next stop $200!", so then they got spooked by demand declines, but also by new Saudi hype, and then its modest production increase.
Most ridiculously, it seems they psyched themselves up so much for Gustav to absolutely clobber the Gulf, that when the damage to oil and refinery infrastructure proved significant but not as bad as they expected, they ran with the (relative) good news and disregarded the (absolute) bad news.
It's similar to the stock market this week, this emotional volatility. On Monday the market rallied because everyone was euphoric over the Mae and Mac bailout, but by Tuesday they were depressed over Lehman's prospects and the market tumbled. It's like manic-depression or the euphoria-crash roller coaster of a crackhead.
Now we wait to see how much damage Ike did, and how gasoline supply and price will respond to that.
So to sum up:
*Production has been stagnant since 2005, and the price trend had been overwhelmingly upward.
*If this is the Peak, we can expect to see ever-greater price volatility (extreme-weather events) within the climbing price climate.
*The recent Saudi production increase and American demand decline (both modest) will have to show far greater staying power before we can consider them lasting features rather than manifestations of volatility themselves.
*Speculators probably exacerbate trends rather than generate them; this aggravation will be a synergy of emotional volatility with other system volatilities.
Appendix:
Meanwhile, the OPEC nations themselves seem nervous about the prospect of a crash. Interestingly, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela -- all of whom are more or less hostile to the U.S. -- are pushing for production cuts. Good thing our dear friend Saudi Arabia is telling them to go to hell!
This is a simple example of the big producer undercutting the smaller producers. As price declines, the Saudis can still collect their revenue through bulk sales.
But the smaller producers don't have that option, so they can only watch revenues dwindle.
That, far more than hostility to America, is why Venezuela and Iran are the price hawks in OPEC.
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Russ Posted 12:56 pm
13 Sep 2008
That's "has", not "had".
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amazingdrx Posted 2:11 pm
13 Sep 2008
It was scamming, inside market manipulation.
But NOOO.. you wouldn't listen. Said it was peak oil, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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dobermanmacleod Posted 2:33 pm
13 Sep 2008
By the way, I have no connection to this product, and am only trying to spread the word:
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Colin Wright Posted 2:54 pm
13 Sep 2008
At the Oil Drum, Gail the Actuary is predicting things will get much worseInsight 10. Because some areas are likely to be very short of supply, it is likely that gasoline prices would need to rise to $10 a gallon or more in those areas, to cut back demand sufficiently.
In some areas, there may be temporary shortfalls of 25% of more of gasoline supply. To allocate such short supplies would take a very high price. Government officials are not likely to let this happen. Instead, we are likely to see many stations that are completely out of gasoline, and other stations with long lines, selling at most 10 gallons per customer.
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:59 pm
13 Sep 2008
Back then the only way to get around with less gas (besides the obvious bus, car pool, etc.) was to buy a very small foreign car. As soon as supplies increased there was a gradual movement back to larger vehicles. Especially when gas became quite cheap much later.
Now we are looking at very promising developments for personal transportation that will be less expensive to power than oil at $50 per barrel. Add in the extra environmental benefits of abandoning fossil fuels and the safe bet would be that petroleum personal transportation is in its final decades.
We don't yet have good non-liquid fuel for large vehicles that need to go long distances, but moving smaller vehicles off the oil teat will both drop the price of fueling big trucks/planes and extend the availability of our limited supply.
Farming and mining? We can do those jobs with electricity. We already do our sub-surface mining with electricity. Large vehicles that don't travel long distances during their days work are good candidates for exchangeable battery packs.
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Sam Wells Posted 3:16 pm
13 Sep 2008
One thing for certain is that about a trillion in speculator money has left the market for elsewhere, so we can't blame cost inflation on them. Now other factors such as the rising dollar and geopolitics seem to have more of an impact. A rising dollar is in a way very bad news, as crude is always traded in dollars per tonne or barrel.
A rising dollar could not only lower crude oil costs but also inadvertently cause economic growth to go very flat. This has some rather insidious effects. If there is no economic expansion, then people won't buy as much crude oil and its refined products.
Could it be a blessing? Well heck yeah, some are looking at alternative clean/green energy sources, and I am surprised that Grist did not pick up on the market signal. Of course it is an election year, but even Big Oil expects more "windfall profit taxes" in an marginal or declining market in the US.
So get with it and figure it out - the next bubble will be in food commodities. No, we won't fix that before disasters happen, but that's where the missing trillion in speculator money largely went. So concentrate on what Grist is so good at - promoting clean energy and protecting our food supply in a sustainable manner.
Good luck on the latter one. Whoa, that's a nasty bubble, amigos and amigas, food. -sammie
Onward through the fog
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Sam Wells Posted 3:17 pm
13 Sep 2008
Onward through the fog
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JMG Posted 3:28 pm
13 Sep 2008
The 5% Project
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:28 pm
13 Sep 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 3:32 pm
13 Sep 2008
Not me.
We who are our own editors are with you Sam.
So the Saudis want gas prices to drop, so Obama doesn't win and uinstiture an alternative to oil ,plugin transportaion energy revolution? Maybe that's it.
Drill, baby, drill. All the OPECers gotta love that sloganeering, because it means we won't get serious about killing their golden goose. And taking back financial control of our own economy.
Remember the pearl market anyone? The population of the ME boomed 10 fold during that monopoly game. Japnese cultured pearls killed them that time around.
Before that it was the silk trade. Then the slave trade. Actually they still do that.
Now it's oil. All that instant shake and bake high rise oil culture ...melting back into the sand?
Yep, they are going down for the count again. That's a shame.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pangolin Posted 3:36 pm
13 Sep 2008
Whatever the price of oil was on November 2nd of an election your you can bet that it will be higher on December 2nd and much higher by April 2nd the following year. This is a sure thing bet on the commodities market if you have the money to invest. Remember this only works in even numbered years with a Republican president.
Now just who would this benefit? Certainly not a party with extensive financial and personal ties to the oil business. It's not like the government would lie to us?
Of course some free-market fundie who hasn't read last weeks papers will come and tell us that there is no way that the Saudi's would manipulate world oil prices to benefit the Bush administration.
The sky-fairy wouldn't allow it.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 3:40 pm
13 Sep 2008
You bought that nonsense? That speculation is to blame?
Insider trading manipulation is different. It's what OPEC, the Saudis, and many of the bankrupt hedge fund traders did and do. That's not speculation.
Besides which, inside traders are now manipulating on the short side. They make money by manipulating prices down as well as up. Kind of convenient isn't it?
Markets can be fixed to soar or drop. When they are completely unregulated. As they are now, after decades of Reagan revolutionary "free" market propganda backed by lobbyists like mcCain economic advisor Gramm. Who helped design the enron loophole.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pangolin Posted 3:50 pm
13 Sep 2008
Say at the same time a large number of dollar denominated assets became worthless negating the ability of overseas investers to purchase commodities with dollars. Could that reduce the number of dollars therefore making the dollars available for oil purchase worth more?
The nasty thing about wheels within wheels complexities is that it makes too much of the world a crap shoot to those outside the engine room.
Back to praying to FSM for winning lotto ticket.
Put the Carbon Back
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:56 pm
13 Sep 2008
Might they not back off of prices a bit rather than throw the US into a tailspin?
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amazingdrx Posted 4:16 pm
13 Sep 2008
It's what every "free" marketeerian apologist says when we propose reregulation.
"What would any business cut it's own throat, to obtain short term profits, by making shoddy ptoducts, manipulating markets, or defrauding consumers?", they reason.
It's just as hilarious everytime it's repeated in whatever form. "Gosh, the benevolent Saudis, exxon mobile, Cheney, and OPEC just want a stable world economy".
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Bob Wallace Posted 4:47 pm
13 Sep 2008
The key part to my question is "every single player".
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amazingdrx Posted 4:58 pm
13 Sep 2008
But a few who aren't, who just want theirs, screw it up for everyone. They cheat, manipulate oil futures for instance. With just a few others. It worrks, they make money.
So they push it, they get drunk on success and want to impress people, so they talk. Let others in on it.
Soon a bubble starts forming. Mutual funds start taking losses day after day to these manipulators.
So their computer model tells them that they better buy into this bubble too, or they are screwed. They buy in, it inflates even more.
It pops! Who suffers? We the people, our economy, our deficit (bailouts), our currency (inflation), our security, we end up waging war over oil for instance, for our Saudi "allies".
The hedge fund cronies who started it? their money is offshore, and they are trading the buuble deflation. Making more money manipulating all the way down.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Bob Wallace Posted 5:16 pm
13 Sep 2008
But enough aren't that we are required to write laws and regulations and establish processes to back them up.
That's the reality that the Libertarians just can't grasp.
It's the reason that we can't have a 100% free market.
The greedy and selfish will always be with us.
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Pangolin Posted 5:24 pm
13 Sep 2008
You get crushed and it keeps rolling.
BTW that's the best argument I have against nuclear power. The guy who runs the plant controls your life. If he hits the switch the power goes down and you stop working until he gets paid what he wants. It's only cheaper until you're life is linked to it as an umbilical; then it will cost you more than solar panels on your roof.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 6:03 pm
13 Sep 2008
And amen Pang.
"The guy who runs the plant controls your life."
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:05 am
14 Sep 2008
With the smart grid and net metering anyone who can figure out how to create a few watts can market them by simply plugging in.
Come up with a good idea for making power and if it's economically viable you wouldn't have to talk the big utility company into buying your idea. Just sell your power through their lines.
(And, yes, the grid owners deserve to make a "fair" profit. (Just short circuiting the rabid capitalists here. ;o))
Nice article on co-generation on Peak Energy recently. Here's the money paragraph...
"There are different types of co-generation, but the concept is simply this: take energy that is being wasted on an industrial scale and find a way to put it to use. Do that, and co-generation could provide up to 20% of the nation's electrical generation, replacing a large number of our coal plants at a lower cost and with roughly the same reliability."
Now, say you run something like a cannery. Lots of heat needed in that process. Unlikely the big local utility would bother marketing your 'heat'. But you could. Another profit center.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:07 am
14 Sep 2008
From a small solar panel on the roof to a huge solar system on a Walmart or a wind machine or biogas generator on a farm. It all just needs modern online technology to integrate into a more reliable system than the central baseload grid that goes down when it gets too hot or storms strike.
A smart grid can operate independently on the single home level all the way up to local, state, and regional levels. It responds instantly to coming emergencies, with weather, wind, and solar information anticipating supply/demand changes.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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gmobus Posted 3:40 am
14 Sep 2008
Chaotic systems are often driven into new regimens by the forcing of a single parameter. In climate that would be atmospheric temperature (by way of GHG emissions). In the oil and general energy markets (really the whole economy by virtue of the fact that energy is the only thing that really drives it) it is demand, aggregated by virtue of summing all the per capita demand factors on a global scale (transportation, domestic, commercial, etc.).
Russ hit the nail on the head above. The volatility we see in the climate (extreme weather) and in the oil price (as a surrogate for the economy) is a result of chaotic dynamics. There is no one factor to blame, other than the systemic drivers. Trying to pin speculators or Saudis or politics is a useless game because it is a distraction from the real issues. Population size and human nature -- the desire for more external energy support -- are the elements that most affect everything else that is going on.
Oh yes, and for those who keep dreaming of technological fixes, well take comfort in your dreams. Reality is likely to be a lot less satisfying.
George
Question Everything
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:46 am
14 Sep 2008
The technique that they were using was covering their deep freezer with a thermal blanket and putting it on a timer so that it only turned on during off-peak/lower rate times. Kind of a crude, but effective, approach.
Move to a smart grid and the system would know the current availability(price) of electricity, the freezer temperature, and the outside freezer temperature.
If demand is high and local conditions permit, any freezer could delay a cooling cycle in order to free up more power for other uses and to save the owner some money.
(Heck, with the smart grid one could get a call/email if their freezer started heating up. Opportunity to go home and reinstall the plug that the cat knocked loose.)
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Sam Wells Posted 4:12 am
14 Sep 2008
I am certainly no expert, but a bunch of companies that buy fuel, like shipping, airlines, and trucking, bought out all the low-end contracts they could lock in. Southwest Airlines was famous for this. So many of the new bettors gamble higher than the low end of the spread. What I don't understand is the "herd mentality" that drove up the price of crude oil, although some very famous market analysts were talking $200/barrel oil for several years now.
Well the herd "done stampeded somewhere else" as a Texan would say, which I can directly associate with softness in the market now. It could go up or down in light trading, and act more on its fundamentals than group psychology. That is why Hurricane Ike has about a 30 cent premium instead of a much more at the retail pump.
The same old day-traders are there after the herd left, call them speculators if you must. It's just a different game now. The question is whether the run-up in oil (caused by the herd) will create a disastrous bubble, or if in the long term "peak oil" will rear its ugly head based on fundamentals. Nobody knows, as it is notoriously fickle and volatile market.
-sam
Onward through the fog
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:59 am
14 Sep 2008
Knocking out electricity and water for millions of people. This will probably be the unfolding spectacle for the next week,because people don't realize how dependent we are on those systems. And to make it worse, people in the Houston area are completely dependent on the car, meaning oil, leading to
the complexity of the global oil system. From oil supply in unreliable countries, to global freighter networks, to oil refineries in hurricane pathways, the system is ridiculously complex.
Assuming the hurricane can be linked at least statistically to global warming, we have a prescription for chaos, all right.
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amazingdrx Posted 7:16 am
14 Sep 2008
With smart grid technology many businesses or homes could have their own backup emergency power. As local neighborhoods were reconnected again they would provide emergency power for neighbors.
The central grid is just too vulnerable in the increasingly volatile weather connected with GHG climate change. Lost business and income from 4 to 6 weeks without power is devestating especially with family finances and mortgages handing by a thread.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:33 am
14 Sep 2008
This is a misunderstanding of what "Smart Grid" technology is. Smart Grid is a lot of things, but it does not automatically mean individual businesses and homes having their own power supplies. For that matter, a lot of businesses and homes have backup generators now, even in the absence of a smart grid. A smart Grid is a way of managing power. It can increase grid reliability, decrease capital costs by lowering the need for spinning reserves and lowering peak demand. In a renewable grid with a large variable supply, it could shift a portion of demand to follow supply rather that require 100% of supply to follow demand. But a bad enough hurricane or earthquake or severe natural disaster is going to knock out power no matter what kind of grid you have. If you live on an island that essentially ends up under water during a storm, you can expect some time to pass before surviving buildings end up with power again. I'm not saying that given that most of humanity lives in zones where some sort of disaster occurs on occasion you can't build with recovery in mind, but being without electricity for a time in the face of something like this is not unreasonable, or something you can guarantee won't happen.
I love smart grid technology. I think it is great. But it is not magic; we need to understand what it can and can't do, and not have unreasonable expectations.
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Sam Wells Posted 8:23 am
14 Sep 2008
Much is said of the 4 to 6 weeks to get the power on. How ridiculous. Some folks on the western side of Houston had the power come back on today! Some houses in South Houston now have lights. But on Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula, it might take several months before all is connected - everyone is just guessing here because they don't even know the damage yet.
As to electricity and refineries, that is a huge issue. Incredible amounts of electricity are used for pumps and all kinds of stuff at a refinery, which means they are "shut out" even if conditions were otherwise OK (refineries are also massive water users). People don't think of refineries are large electrical users until they see the massive high-tension lines that go there.
All the more reason to build energy resource systems that don't require such heavy use of electric power.
As a side note, President Bush and instructed EPA to waive all Clean Air Act regulations on fuel quality at affected bunker terminals (the huge tanks of fuels). Uh-oh!
Onward through the fog
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