OIL

The world has more proven reserves of oil today than it did three decades ago, according to official estimates. Despite years of oil guzzling and countless doomsday predictions, the world is simply not running out of oil. The key is understanding the role of scarcity, price signals, and future techn...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foreign policy 2007-01 (163), p.24-20
Main Author: Vaitheeswaran, Vijay V
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
8510
9180
Fuel oil prices
International
Oil reserves
Petroleum industry
Petroleum production
Price increases
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The world has more proven reserves of oil today than it did three decades ago, according to official estimates. Despite years of oil guzzling and countless doomsday predictions, the world is simply not running out of oil. The key is understanding the role of scarcity, price signals, and future technological innovation in bringing the world's vast remaining hydrocarbon reserves to market. High oil prices are the result of short-term mismatches between supply and demand, a relationship seen in all commodity markets. All it takes is another global economic hiccup like the Asian financial crisis for oil markets to shift out of balance, leading prices to soften or worse, just as they did in 1997. Russia produces some 10 million barrels of oil per day, roughly on par with Saudi Arabia. There is no arguing that China's demand for oil has grown dramatically in the past decade and that the major global energy producers failed to anticipate how much upheaval it would cause to oil markets.
ISSN:0015-7228