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1、The oil price Recoil 油价反弹May 29th 2008From The Economist print editionPainful though it is, this oil shock will eventually spur huge change. Beware the hunt for scapegoatsIN THE early 1970s a fourfold rise in the price of oil almost brought the world to a standstill. The shock of the Arab embargo le
2、ft a deep mark in many countries: America subjected its cars to fuel-efficiency standards, France embraced nuclear powerthough sadly “energy-conscious fashion”, the inspiration for Japans fetching short-sleeved business suit, was ahead of its time.Thirty-five years on, oil prices have quadrupled aga
3、in, briefly soaring to a peak of just over $135 a barrel. But, so far, this has been a slow-motion oil shock. If the Arab oil-weapon felt like a hammer-blow, this time stagnant oil output and growing emerging-market demand have squeezed the oil market like a vice. For almost five years a growing wor
4、ld shrugged it off. Only now is it recoiling in pain.This week French fishermen clogged up the port of Dunkirk and British lorry-drivers choked roads into London and Cardiff. Nicolas Sarkozy, Frances president, suggested subsidising the worst affected and curbing taxes on petrol; Britains beleaguere
5、d government is being pressed to forgo its tax increases on motorists. In America falling house prices have left consumers resentfuland short of money. Congress and presidential candidates have been drafting schemes and gas-tax holidays like so many campaign leaflets. Gordon Brown, Britains prime mi
6、nister, thinks the big oil producers can be persuaded to come to the rescue. But only Saudi Arabia shows any enthusiasm for that. Elsewhere, output is growing agonisingly slowly. That is causing hardship and recrimination. But it could also come to represent an opportunity. The slow-motion shock see
7、ms irresistible today, but in time it will give rise to an equally unstoppable and more positive slow-motion reaction (see article).Action replay It is clear that high oil prices are hurting many economiesespecially in the rich world. Goldman Sachs reckons consumers are handing over $1.8 trillion a
8、year to oil producers. The wage-price spiral of the 1970s has been avoided, but the income shock is painful. Beset by scarce credit, falling asset prices and costly food, developed-country households are hardly well-equipped to foot the oil bill. Americas emergency tax rebate, voted this year to hel
9、p people cope with the credit crunch, has in effect been taken right away again. Stuck for answers, politicians have been looking for scapegoats. Top of the list are the speculators profiting from other peoples hardship. Some $260 billion is invested in commodity funds, 20 times the level of 2003. S
10、urely all that hot money has supercharged the demand for oil? But that is plain wrong. Such speculators do not own real oil. Every barrel they buy in the futures markets they sell back again before the contract ends. That may raise the price of “paper barrels”, but not of the black stuff refiners tu
11、rn into petrol. It is true that high futures prices could lead someone to hoard oil today in the hope of a higher price tomorrow. But inventories are not especially full just now and there are few signs of hoarding.If the speculators are not to blame, what about the oil companies, which have failed
12、to increase output in spite of record profits? Profiteering, say some. However, that accusation doesnt stand up to much scrutiny either. The oil price is set in a market. For Shell, Exxon et al to hoard oil underground would be to leave billions of dollars of investment languishing unused. Others fe
13、ar that oil is pricey because it is running out. But there is little evidence to support the doctrine of “peak oil” in its extreme form. The Middle East still seems to contain a sea of the stuff. Even if new finds elsewhere have been rarer and less accessible than in the past, vast quantities of oil
14、 could now be profitably stripped from tar sands and shale. The truth is more prosaic. Finding and developing new oil fields is an expensive and time-consuming business. The giant new fields in the deep water off Brazil are unlikely to produce oil for a decade or more. Furthermore, oil is perverse.
15、When prices are low, oil-rich countries welcome the low-cost, high-tech and well-capitalised oil firms. When prices are high, countries like Russia and Venezuela kick them out again. Likewise the engineers, survey ships and seismic rigs that oil firms need to find and produce new deposits are expens
16、ive right now. The costs of finding oil have, temporarily, doubled precisely because everybody wants to give them work. Hope at the bottom of the barrelSo the oil shock will take time to abate. Some greens may welcome that, seeing three-figure oil as a way of limiting greenhouse emissions. Conservation will indeed increase. But everything high prices achieve could be done better by sensible carbon taxes. As well as curbing oil use, high prices have put tar sands in business w
