Real Risks

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Could there be an oil “bubble?” Well, yes. In early 2002, oil sold for roughly $20 a barrel; now it’s close to $75. The main cause lies in tightening supply and demand — and the fact that supply (as the present Middle East fighting reminds us) could be interrupted at any time. Old-fashioned speculation may also have played a role, and that raises the possibility of a bubble. But any bubble would be a peculiar beast, and if it burst and prices dropped significantly, we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that this might signal a new era of comfortable abundance. It wouldn’t.

In financial bubbles, prices become disconnected from “fundamentals.” At the height of the tech bubble, stocks of dot-com companies with no profits (and little prospect for them) sold at fabulous prices. By contrast, oil prices aren’t unhinged from “fundamentals.” Despite all the griping, gasoline is still affordable. Even at $3 a gallon, it costs Americans only about 4% of their disposable income. The same is true globally. At $70 a barrel, global crude sales would total about $2.2 trillion annually; that’s still a tiny share of the $50 trillion world economy.

Indeed, it is precisely because people and companies need oil so desperately — it’s essential for almost everything they do — that any possible scarcity raises prices sharply. In economics jargon, prices are “inelastic.” A big jump dampens demand only slightly.

For decades, crude was in surplus. In 1985, for example, the world used 60 million barrels daily (mbd) of oil, while countries could produce about 70 mbd. Refineries were also in surplus; in 1985, American refineries operated at 78% of capacity. Loss of crude supplies or refineries didn’t create scarcities. “Historically, when something went wrong — and something was always going wrong, a pipeline outage or refinery accident — the problem was made up somewhere else,” says economist Lawrence Goldstein of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an industry think tank.

Now, demand is about 85 mbd, and any surplus is negligible. Refineries are also stretched tight. The American operating rate typically exceeds 90% of capacity — a margin needed for maintenance. Low prices and miscalculation explain the turnaround. From 1985 to 1999, crude prices averaged $18 a barrel. Investment in expensive oil fields and new refineries became unprofitable. Companies cut budgets. Meanwhile, almost everyone underestimated demand. Driven by China, it grew much faster after 2000 than before.

So prices had to rise. Otherwise, demand might have exceeded supply. But did they have to rise from $20 to $70 a barrel? Here’s where “speculation” may have contributed.

The big players are institutional investors — pension funds, hedge funds (pools of loosely regulated funds), and investment banks. They’ve purchased oil futures contracts and, in effect, bet that prices six months or a year out will exceed present prices. Since 2002, investment in futures contracts may have quintupled to more than $100 billion, estimates energy economist Philip Verleger Jr.

This may have raised present (or “spot”) oil prices, argues a staff report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. As investors pour money into futures contracts, futures prices rise. Since late 2004, they’ve usually exceeded spot prices. On a recent day, the spot price was $74.60 and the futures price for December was $2 higher.This creates an incentive for companies to put more oil into storage (“inventories”), the report says, because it’s more profitable to sell oil in the future than today. Oil inventories for industrial countries “are at a 20-year high.” Spot prices rise because there’s less oil on the market.

It’s unclear how much this sort of speculation has increased prices, if at all. The report mentions estimates ranging from $7 to $30 a barrel. In theory, the process could feed on itself and create a huge bubble. The more speculators bought futures, the more oil would go into storage — and the more spot prices would rise. At some point, the bubble would burst. Storage would be filled. Unexpected increases in supply or shortfalls in demand could put huge downward pressures on prices, because sellers would need to sell and (again) demand is inelastic.

Whatever happens, we should avoid the easy conclusion that speculators have artificially increased oil prices. In truth, they are speculating against real risks — the risk that oil from the Persian Gulf gets cut off; that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico damage American oil rigs and refineries; that political events elsewhere (in Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela) curtail supplies.

Oil is essential and insecure. A sensible country would minimize this insecurity by economizing on oil’s use (through taxes and tougher fuel regulations) and developing its own resources. We should have redoubled our efforts years ago; we should do so now.


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