CNN Money reports that potential oil-supply disruptions in Venezuela, along with reports of new violence in Nigeria, has oil-industry traders all a-tizzy. "The combination of these factors creates some concerns about the supply side of the equation," pronounced David Moore, a commodity strategist with Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Further frazzling traders' nerves: pipeline sabotage in the Niger Delta. Royal Dutch Shell says terrorist activity will prevent it from honoring all of its export contracts from the region for two months, deducting some 130k barrels a day off world supply. Still, after jumping to $93.59 a barrel on Monday morning, light sweet crude settled at $93.04 by late afternoon. Meanwhile, over at Oil-Price.net, blogger Steve Austin says the Iran Petroleum Exchange (or "Bourse") is set to begin using Euros to price oil on February 19th. (Currently, major oil markets trade in U.S. dollars.) The switch to Euros "could have devastating effects on the US dollar," Austin says. "Although under-reported by the media, this historical shift and its consequences should be watched closely." Rest assured, TTAC will oblige.
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It’s odd how fate can work. Right after this news item was posted, I was driving here in central Connecticut and saw the following license plate on a Mercedes-Benz SLK 500:
[F∙OPEC]
Not sure how that got through as a custom plate at the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles, but my initial reaction was that it was funny (on a couple of levels).
Due to the decline and instability of the US dollar, our company (Canadian) has switched to Euros for all our international transactions. This is becoming a very common trend – Iran will not be the only country doing this. If the US isn’t careful, the $US will no longer be the world’s benchmark.
The Euro gained in strength while commodities were not priced in it; the dollar may or may not lose value no matter how the different commodity exchanges are denominated.
The dollar was long the international currency of choice because it was the biggest and most liquid — back in the day, if you and a bunch of other businesses each had to come up with $500m worth of “cash” for all your particular purposes (meaning bank deposits noted on the accounts of the clearing system or central bank), everyone involved would have been hard pressed to scour the world for enough pounds or deutchmarks to use at the same time. So everyone used dollars because there was always enough of them, plus once you had your dollars there was an endless supply of T-Bills in which to park your money — safe and interest-bearing — until you figured out how to spend it.
The Euro has emerged as a liquidity competitor, because there are enough of them out there so everyone can use a bunch at the same time, but the markets for Euro-denominated high-quality government debt is still not very deep. If you end up with a pile of Euros and need to park them somewhere for a while that’s safe, interest-bearing, and can be liquidated in an instant once you’ve figured out how to spend your money, you’re still a little bit stuck. That’s why the dollar is still a major world currency, even though our fiscal, monetary and trade policies have seen its exchange value fall, and why it will continue to be for some time.
If the eurocrats ever figure out how to replicate our government bond system, then we’re in trouble — but since bond issuance is still on a country-by-country basis in Europe, that’s a long way away. There isn’t one market where everyone with his money can go; there are numerous markets (one for the debt of each major country) where everyone (with a big enough stash) has to take a portion of his money, since on a smaller market it is harder to buy or sell a huge amount quickly, because there are fewer buyers and sellers out there to bid on a sudden huge offer.
Huh, well if this is the age of the Euro it’s going to be a short ride, as over the next few decades the economies of both the U.S. and China will bound far ahead to leave the EU behind as a minor player. That is as certain as anything can be in this world.
What (Simmons) has found, he says, “is so unbelievably scary you can’t believe it.” He claims that there is mounting technical evidence that Aramco is struggling to deal with increasing volumes of water at its hugest fields. With water production going up, he says, oil production is going down.
“It is absolutely clear as a bell now that all of those fields are heading toward being another Cantarell,” referring to the massive Mexican offshore field, which is now in rapid decline.
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/12/big-peak-oil-debate-redux/?mod=googlenews_wsj
Kevin I would bet your neck on your prediction, just to help the natural selection along its long and winding path.
there is mounting technical evidence that Aramco is struggling to deal with increasing volumes of water at its hugest fields. With water production going up, he says, oil production is going down.
Doesn’t Saudi Arabia need water? Maybe they can leverage agriculture as their replacement economy.
franz, SA is pumping more and more of that water into their oil wells to force the crude up and out. I suppose they pump the water they separate from the oil back into the wells. Late stage oil extraction can also be accomplished by pumping various gases into the wells. There is always a large percentage of what they call unrecoverable reserves (URR) in the fields. Every so often they come up with a new, but more expensive, technique to recover some of that URR but its hard to believe we’ll ever actually mine every last bit of oil.
Actually, I remembered URR wrong, it means Ultimate Recoverable Resources. There is a large percentage of oil that isn’t in the URR because it can’t be recovered profitably with current technology. You can always mine something out, but if it doesn’t cost enough to make the mining worth it, no one will bother.