Oil Price hits USD100 a barrel - Zil's Time Capsule

After giant leap, oil steady at USD 100

Sydney, Jan 03: Oil prices dipped on Thursday, after leaping to a lifetime high of $100 the day before, fuelled by expectations of thinning U.S. stockpiles, the falling dollar and geopolitical risks.

US light crude for February delivery fell 32 cents to USD 99.30 a barrel in Globex electronic trading by 0524 GMT. US crude touched USD 100 a barrel in the previous session, surpassing the previous peak of USD 99.29 set in November.

London Brent crude shed 43 cents to USD 97.41.

Oil prices climbed 57 percent in 2007, and many fund managers were bracing for another year of volatile, but rising, commodity prices. Gold also hit a record high on Wednesday.

"We still have our maximum quota on oil and we don`t see any reason to lighten up our position at all since all the risks are still to the upside," said Justin Wilkes, a fund manager at Global Commodities in Australia.

"Our appetite for oil hasn`t waned at all."

Despite oil rocketing to USD 100, the White House said it would not open up the nation`s emergency crude reserves to bring down prices, while two members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said the cartel was powerless to lower the market from its lofty heights.

Indonesia`s OPEC governor warned on Thursday that oil prices could climb to the USD 100-USD 110 level and said OPEC might decide to increase output at its Feb 1 meeting in Vienna if supply was insufficient.

ATTACKS

Oil`s jump in the previous session was partly helped by a fresh wave of violence in Nigeria and Algeria, stoking worries of more supply disruptions from the two OPEC members.

Suspected militants mounted attacks in Nigeria`s oil city, Port Harcourt, on Tuesday, killing 18. Regular assaults by militant groups since February 2006 have already cut oil exports by the world`s eighth-largest crude exporter by about 20 percent.

Separately, al Qaeda`s North Africa wing claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Algeria on Wednesday in a recording aired by Al Arabiya television.

Oil traders are also increasingly concerned about the steady decline in US crude oil stocks, which were expected to have fallen by another 2.2 million barrels last week, a seventh successive draw, a poll found.

Weekly government data will be released on Thursday at 10:30 am (1530 GMT).

The US dollar`s fall on Wednesday also spurred speculative buying that boosted oil prices. The dollar slid on Wednesday as one of the gauges of the US lowest since April 2003, raising expectations for more Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.

Oil prices have nearly tripled since 2003, driven by rising demand in China and other developing countries, tight stockpiles and geopolitical turmoil.

Its climb to the psychologically key triple-digit mark hit stocks on Wall Street and has raised the spectre of the United States heading into recession later this year.

Oil at USD 100 is unlikely to shake US consumers

With oil having briefly touched the once unfathomable price of USD 100 a barrel, consumers can expect the cost of filling their gas tanks, heating their homes _ in fact, the price of most everything _ to also keep rising.

Still, analysts do not expect record-high prices by themselves to send the US economy into recession, simply because expensive as oil is, energy doesn`t consume as big a chunk of Americans` budget as it did decades ago.

``So far, consumers have done an amazing job of ignoring high oil prices, not to mention falling home prices,`` said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor`s.

A barrel of light, sweet crude reached triple digits for the first time Wednesday, soaring 44 percent since August and 57 percent since the end of 2006. Meanwhile, gasoline prices at the pump reached a national average of USD 3.05 a gallon (80 cents a liter), according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That`s below their May peak of USD 3.23 a gallon (85 cents a liter) but likely to go higher as the spring and summer approach.

Rising energy prices were cited as a contributing factor in disappointing sales for the just-ended holiday season, along with the continuing slump in housing and an overall uneasiness about the economy. But economists say that generally, the jump in oil is less devastating than previous spikes because incomes have risen faster than energy costs.

Bureau Report

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Govt. is using petroleum to fill their coffer by just bluffing and misleading public. Two points here need to be mentioned: firstly why Govt. charge customs duty on crude import and excise duty on refined petrol as percentage of value and why not on quantity like per ton or per liter? Due to charging duty on value, the duty component increases with price hike of product and exert extra load on price although it increases income of the Govt. CPM has already pointed this fact and asked the Govt. to rationalized, but they will not do. Second point is dollar/ rupee exchange rate. Since all petroleum company buy crude with rupee payment, during the last one year falling dollar has benefited them. Although the crude price has increased from $70 to $90, but in this period rupee appreciation was more than 20%, so actual increase of crude price was marginal. - sujit

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The Coming Oil Price Decline
by Michael S. Rozeff
by Michael S. Rozeff

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Oil prices have finally reached $100 a barrel. I now hear predictions of $200 a barrel. People who make forecasts like round numbers.

I do not expect $200 oil any time soon. I expect $85 oil first, and $70 oil first, and $50 oil first.

I do not believe in doomsday scenarios that relate to the earth’s resources. There are phenomena in the universe that can end the earth or human life on it. They do not include running out of energy because we lack resources.

Some predictions of $200 oil rest on the idea of peak oil. I am not betting on $200 oil any time soon because of peak oil. Peak oil rests on the assumption of depleting a known stock of oil. It is logical that as a fixed supply declines and demand rises, the price of oil will rise. The supply of oil will rise as its real price rises, however. New oil fields are being discovered all the time. Oil exploration companies are hard at work. Oil drilling service firms are hard at work. They are looking for employees across the board. Supply won’t stay fixed as the peak oil idea requires. Neither will demand. As oil price rises, demand for oil will be curtailed, and people will turn to alternative sources of energy.

Even if the oil price does rise to $200 at some date, doomsday need not also occur. That’s because there are many alternative sources of energy. In fact, $200 oil (in real terms) is such a high price that entrepreneurs will be working feverishly to bring more oil to market and to bring to market other sources of energy.

The only doomsday energy scenarios that I see as possible are those in which our and other governments prevent entrepreneurs from bringing new and economical energy supplies to market. If the U.S. government continues to insist that we use corn and ethanol to make fuel, or insists on subsidizing particular energy sources, or directly controls energy supplies and demands, then those actions can bring us doomsday. We can get doomsday courtesy of the U.S. government. It can force us all to suffer. But it would have to keep energy-saving innovations off the market, and these can come both from domestic and foreign sources. I don’t think that our government can and will do that. Such a backward policy will lose too many votes.

We got a taste of a government-made energy doomsday when we had price controls on energy in the 1970s. People waited in line for gasoline. They became very upset. We are getting a taste of that now as we still have a cabinet-level Department of Energy, and its regulations are raising prices and interfering with supplies. The taste of doomsday is a very unpleasant taste. It makes for a very inconvenient life. My guess is that its unpopularity will not let draconian energy measures prevail. Some politicians will run on a platform of bringing down energy prices and people will vote for them. Or else there will be enough loopholes in the regulations that doomsday never quite arrives. I could be wrong.

When I guess that $200 oil won’t arrive soon, and that when it does arrive eventually that it will be a non-event, I am banking on the operation of free markets in energy. They do not have to be fully free. There can be OPEC and an oil cartel. However, as the real price of oil rises, the incentive to find more oil and bring it to market rises. And, what is even more important, the incentive to develop other sources of energy that compete with oil rises. The key element of a free market that works to hold down the price rise in oil and prevent doomsday is the profit motive. If the price is higher than cost, the companies will search for more oil. They will search for more ways to extract existing oil at lower cost. They will bring new energy-saving devices to market, because consumers, faced with higher prices, will be looking for ways to economize on energy expenditures. The entire structure of location and travel will alter as prices rise so that less travel is necessary. The entire manner of building new buildings will alter to make them more energy-efficient. All of this is going on already. Some of it goes on accompanied by government action, but much of it goes on regardless of government or with government trailing behind.

OPEC controls something like 40 percent of world oil and gas production. Its market share is declining. Cartels cannot control the production of nonmembers who are outside the cartel. Cartels often have a hard time controlling the production of members of the cartel. OPEC surely cannot control the oil and gas exploration activities of nonmembers. It surely cannot control the many companies that want to bring to market alternative sources of energy altogether. The free market has a way of seeping in around the edges of a cartel and corroding its ironclad pricing. Cartels break down.

Oil prices can rise as the value of the dollar declines, but I am talking here about the real price of oil. I am not forecasting the course of the dollar in this article.

Oil has been a cyclical commodity. This does not mean that it follows any kind of regular cycle. The business cycle is not a regular cycle. It means that the oil price has with an irregular periodicity displayed some large and noticeable fluctuations. It goes up, and it falls substantially.

A few years ago, the price dropped to $15 or so from $40. In recent decades, the fluctuations had a mean of about $25 a barrel. Over longer periods, the price has been lower than that, around $17 a barrel. These averages have perhaps risen as other prices have risen. Perhaps oil has a kind of normal or average value of $35–$50 a barrel. The $100 oil we now see is quite unusual. Perhaps shifts in demand from new market buyers in countries like China and India have shifted the price up. That is plausible. But, historically, new supplies have come to market and offset the rising demands of industrializing countries. It’s a reasonable bet that the same thing will happen now, and that argues for stabilization and decline in the $100 price of oil.

The rapid pace of industrialization has been driven in part by easy-money policies, as in China. The China boom will come to an end, just as the U.S. expansion now is slowing and the stock market falling. Those slowdowns will place some short-term downward pressure on oil prices.

But I stress that, although recession may trigger lower prices, it is not at all the reason for my forecast. I am stressing the standard free-market industry dynamic. Higher prices call forth greater supplies with a time lag. These supplies drive prices down, often to a surprising degree. Free markets work. The cyclicality of oil prices does not coincide with the business cycle. It has to do with the activities of entrepreneurs in bringing more oil supply to market. Entrepreneurs also bring to market new ways to make devices more energy-efficient, and they conceive of altogether new sources of energy. All these activities bring the price of oil down. It has happened before. I expect it to happen again.

I expect oil prices to decline in the coming months, perhaps between now and several years from now. I don’t know if $100 is the top price or not. No one can forecast the exact top. It’s foolhardy to try. But since I am forecasting price decline, I may as well spell out that implicitly this means that I expect further upside progress in the price of oil, if it occurs, to be labored, limited (say 10 percent), and short-lived. The next move of substantial magnitude that occupies a substantial amount of time I expect to be down.

January 16, 2008

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York.

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

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