O Intermitente
(So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye)

quinta-feira, junho 03, 2004

Mitos Petroliferos

Excerto de um artigo no Daily Telegraph.

The oil price is "the highest for 21 years". That is true in cash terms but, if you take account of inflation, you get a different picture. In real terms, at $42 a barrel in New York on Tuesday, the oil price is not that high. In 1980, after the Shah was deposed in Iran, the price hit the equivalent of $100.

Oil is "running out". Of course, oil could one day. But, at the moment, it is still flowing. How much oil can be economically extracted depends on the price. In his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg quotes research which shows that, at $40 a barrel, known oil reserves increase from 40 years to 250 because vast deposits in shale become economically viable. And some major oil-producing countries such as Libya, Iraq and Russia are not yet fully explored.

Opec is "doing all it can". The Qatar oil minister has repeated this myth, but in fact Opec is a cartel prone to price rigging. An analysis by Lombard Street Research falls just short of accusing Opec of lying by exaggerating its domestic needs. "The Opec game appears to be: declare output and capacity to be high ? and then account for the lack of exports by claiming higher rates of consumption," says Lombard.