Peak Oil, Globalization
Peak Oil
A recent article titled '4 Bombshell Reports Suggest:
Peak Oil Now an Imminent Reality' says that "official recognition of the peak oil
threat has been muted up until now, couched in warnings about "adequate investment"
and blithe assertions that demand would soon peak, averting any supply shortage.
All that seems to have changed in the last month with a sudden deluge of reports
and summit meetings suggesting that the oil industry and energy officials are now
taking peak oil very seriously indeed". The article goes on to
discuss the following four recently issued reports:
·
'The Oil Crunch: A wake-up call for
the UK economy' - that warns "oil shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility
will destabilise economic, political, and social activity potentially by 2015";
·
'Kuwait Report: Peak by 2014' - authored
by three people from the College of Engineering and Petroleum at Kuwait University
who applied advanced mathematics to reserve and production data for the top 47 oil
producing countries using a multi-cycle Hubbert model that estimates (among other
things) the world's ultimate crude oil production will peak in 2014 around 79 mbpd,
and that OPEC production will peak at 53 mbpd in 2026 and decline to 29 mbpd by
2050;
·
'ConocoPhillips: Pursuing New Oil
Reserves Not Worth While' - which reports ConocoPhillips CEO as saying on March
25th that 'pursuing new oil reserves just doesn't pay'; and,
·
'Oxford Report: Reserves Exaggerated
by One Third' - in which former UK chief scientist David King and researchers from
Oxford University released a paper claiming that the world's oil reserves had been
"exaggerated by up to a third," principally by OPEC.
Anyone interested in Peak Oil as a concept, and
its possible consequences going forward, ought to read this article by clicking here.
Globalization
An article this past Saturday titled 'Global Economy:
Similar Policies Lead to Similar Shocks' says (in part) "The mobility of goods,
services and factors of production lead to economic integration. The convergence
of prices for different commodities induces a common response across the world's
economies" - and that "armed with this insight, we can then analyze the impact of
economic shocks whether they are man-made (i.e. economic policy changes) or caused
by nature". The article is lengthy, but I think worth your time
to read by clicking here.
That said, I think the author misses an important point, and hence commented
on the article as follows:
While I think this article is interesting, and
there can be little doubt its author spent a great deal of time and effort when
writing it - I do not read the emphasis on 'differing country ideologies' that I
consider to be an important part of the mix going forward.
From time immemorial people have cooperated in
groups when it has been to their economic advantage to do so, and groups (read countries)
have cooperated with other groups for the same reason. At the same time individuals
and groups have always had moving 'self-interest agendas' underlying their actions
that have led, and unless people at large change, prospectively will lead to individuals
and groups taking advantage where they can - and to minor (and in the end often
major) conflict between individuals and groups at varying levels.
For many reasons - but in particular geographic
movement of manufacturing jobs and (as I see it) the ongoing weakening of the U.S.
as the world's leading economic power - I think what we have lived through in the
past few years, particularly after 1999, and continue to live through on a daily
basis is ongoing economic change in the world order. Going forward, I don't see
this change being economically positive to the developed countries.
I just checked, and 48 hours after
posting this comment on what typically is a very active Discussion Forum there are
only two comments on this article including mine, and neither has been 'marked as
read'. I find this highly curious, as I consider 'globalization'
an increasingly important focal point for equity investors - particularly those
interested in the Resources sectors.