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Samedi 7 juin 2008

Par Andy Rowell | Consommateurs que l'excédent du monde commencent à protester les prix énormes d'essence ils payent à la pompe. Mais tandis que le monde devient fou au-dessus des prix du pétrole, là inquiètent des signes de ce qui se produit sur le marché de gaz qui pourrait également orthographier le désastre.

Mais c'est le prix du pétrole qui attire actuellement toute attention. Le mois dernier, Président indonésien Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a remis une visite officielle à L'Europe parmi des protestations dans tout le pays contre des augmentations des prix de carburant.  Dans L'Europe, Français pêcheurs continués pour bloquer plusieurs stratégiques ports, tandis que leurs contre-parties dedans L'Espagne et protestations également menacées du Portugal.

Au R-U, les camionneurs ont convergé sur Londres pour demander une réduction du devoir de carburant, tandis que Minster principal Gordon Brown entretiens pressants jugés avec l'industrie pétrolière. Plus de en Amérique, on a dit que le prix du pétrole force beaucoup de compagnies de camionnage au bord de la faillite.

Mais car l'huile continue à planer juste sous les niveaux record, il y a des avertissements quotidiens que les jours d'huile bon marché sont allés pour toujours et le prix d'huile peut bientôt être $150 ou même $200 par baril par l'année prochaine.

Il y a également une discussion quotidienne quant à ce qui cause réellement ces prix sans précédent. Un nombre croissant de voix influentes indiquent qu'il n'a rien à faire avec l'approvisionnement réel d'huile mais il est en baisse aux spéculateurs exploitant le marché volatil.

L'OPEP, qui est sous le feu de beaucoup de commentateurs pour l'augmentation  la production davantage, argue du fait que le marché déjà est en juste proportion approvisionné et que $35 par baril de l'augmentation récente peuvent être déposés à la spéculation.

D'autres voix conviennent, comme Jeroen van der Ver, chef du géant global d'huile, Shell, qui argue du fait que les prix du pétrole record sont dus au « sentiment du marché » plutôt qu'à un manque d'approvisionnement. « Ce que nous disons et ce qu'est nous voyons là ne sommes aucun manque physique, » il dit. “Là n'est aucun camion-citerne attendant dans le Moyen-Orient, là n'est aucune voiture attendant aux stations d'essence parce qu'ils sont dehors - de - des actions. Ceci doit faire avec la psychologie sur les marchés et vous ne pouvez pas prévoir la psychologie. »

His view is shared by George Soros, the multi-billion dollar financier, known as the man who nearly “broke the Bank of England”, in the early nineties. Soros argues that it is financial speculators that are largely responsible for driving the crude oil price. “Speculation… is increasingly affecting the price,” he said. “The price has this parabolic shape which is characteristic of bubbles,” he said.

Political action on speculators is increasing. Last week a senior German politician proposed a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators. Uwe Beckmeyer, the head of transport for the Social Democratic party, the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, argued that the recent 25 per cent rise in oil price had nothing to do with underlying supply and demand. “It’s pure speculation,” he said, adding that his party would be calling for joint measures by the G8 to prohibit leveraged trading on energy contracts.

Also last week, in America, Senator Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the influential  Senate Energy Committee, asked the top futures market regulator in the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for more information about how much impact speculation was having on the oil futures market. Bingamen then complained he had been given “glaringly incomplete” data by the CFTC,  which argued that speculative trading was not to blame for recent price rises.

If speculation is not to blame, what is? Some argue that it is the weak dollar. Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in the US argues that “Twenty-five percent of the increase in oil prices is strictly due to the fact that the dollar has gone down by 25 percent, because oil all over the world is priced in dollars.”

However, others are now arguing that the high oil price is down to good old simple economics. Demand has outstripped supply over the last couple of years and so the price has increased, on the back of roaring demand, especially from China and the Middle East. “The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply,” President George Bush’s Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, said this month: “We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system.”

Others concur. One of the authoritative arbiters of how much oil there is the International Energy Agency, that is currently in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world’s top 400 oil fields.  Although the findings will not be published until November, according to the Wall Street Journal the IEA is “preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.”

Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, said the oil industry had entered “a new energy world order” where it was harder to keep supply and demand in equilibrium. “What has happened in the last few years has not been in line with economic theory,” he says.

For years the IEA predicted that supplies of crude would gently increase in line with demand increasing to some 117 million barrels per day by 2030. But not anymore. Buried in the IEA website are figures that up the theory that the supply of oil is in real trouble. Since the beginning of 2004, oil’s price has gone from $33 per barrel to over $130 per barrel. In the same period, demand has increased by some 4.3 million barrels per day to 86.5 million barrels per day, whereas supply has increased by only 2.2 million barrels per day to 85.6 million. Supply is already struggling to keep up with demand, let alone reach over 100 million barrels a day.

The bottom line is that demand is now outstripping supply, giving credence to the peak oil pundits that the days of cheap oil over, and the global economy could be heading for a nasty shock.  

See More:World News 

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