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From the Financial Times:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Saudi Arabia's oil minister: $100 oil may be gone forever. If you've had any doubts about the brutal nature of Saudi Arabia's strategy, well - Just read this (via FT): Opec will not cut production even if the price of oil falls to $20 a barrel, the cartel's de facto leader said, spelling out a dramatic policy shift that will have far-reaching implications for the global energy industry. In an unusually frank interview, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, tore up Opec's traditional strategy of keeping prices high by limiting oil output and replaced it with a new policy of defending the cartel's market share at all costs. "It is not in the interest of Opec producers to cut their production, whatever the price is," he told the Middle East Economic Survey. "Whether it goes down to $20, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant." He said the world may never see $100 a barrel oil again. Saudi Arabia wants to force a mental paradigm shift. There can be no doubt… none, zero… that Saudi Arabia is trying to kill off high-cost marginal production. Whether ali-Naimi is right about "$100 oil gone forever" or not (and many believe he is wrong), the point is scaring the crap out of oil investors and oil project planners. Saudi Arabia wants all manner of high-cost marginal production, all across the globe, to get moth-balled. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my opinion this also has some unfortunate implications for energy saving technologies. Industries like solar power, compressed natural gas, electric cars and wind energy have all made great progress in recent years. It it would be too bad if those efforts were reduced because of lower oil prices. I hate to say this but it might be a good time to impose some sort of sliding petroleum tax designed to stabilize prices at the consumer level, prop up the alternative technology businesses, fund new research and reduce the national debt. European countries have done something similar for many years with high energy taxes which incentivize fuel economy. It's hard to believe that any US politician would have the stomach to back a program like that however. Some would view it as a communist plot similar to attitudes toward the metric system. |
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