Oil prices are high right now because of rapidly growing demand in the developing world primarily Asia. As demand in these places grows, more oil cargoes head towards these countries. Prices in other countries must rise as a result. Political unrest in some oil-producing nations also contributes to high prices - basically, there is a fear that political instability could shut down oil production in these countries.
OPEC, the large oil-producing cartel, does have some ability to influence world prices, but OPEC's influence in the world oil market is shrinking rapidly as new supplies in non-OPEC countries are discovered and developed. As shown in Figure 1. The first phase was marked largely by intra-company transactions with occasional inter-company "spot" sales. The second was defined by the emergence of OPEC and its attempts to influence an increasingly global oil trade for political ends.
The third is defined by the commoditization of oil markets, with regional prices linked by inter-regional trade and the development of sophisticated financial instruments such as futures and option contracts, which we'll discuss in more detail below. Our discussion of the world market for crude oil will be broken into a few sections. We will first focus on what's called the "spot" and "forward" market for crude oil. The term "spot market" generally refers to a short-term commodity transaction where the physical commodity changes hands very soon after the seller receives payment.
Most retail consumer purchases are examples of spot transactions. When I buy a newspaper at the convenience store or a slice of pizza at the pizza shop, I get the product right after I pay for it. Forward markets refer to contracts where buyers and sellers agree up-front on a price for a commodity that will be delivered at some point in the future.
Tauris, Middle East Quarterly Fall Oil may well be the subject on which left-wing conspiracy theories are most deeply entrenched and enjoy the widest audience. An oil plot is said to be behind every political development. Many believe that many modern wars are struggles over who will control oil riches.
At the more mundane level, when the price of gasoline at the pump fell in October , as it does every autumn after the peak of the summer driving season, some thought this was a plot to help Republicans in the midterm elections.
Noreng provides a comprehensive catalog of every paranoid, ill-informed conspiracy theory about oil. Unfortunately, he believes them all, so he presents them with a straight face, rather than with the guffawing laughter they deserve. He writes that the Iraq war has been a success at its apparent goals, namely, "to raise oil prices for the benefit of the independent upstream oil companies and the oil service firms that make a constituency for President Bush, Jr. Still, all of this is embedded in the midst of some rather sober discussion of technical issues, which lend Noreng's book the air of expertise.
For instance, the chapter on "the political economy of oil prices" is less about conspiracies and more about how the heavy taxation of oil products means that consuming country governments extract more revenue from oil sales than do the producing country governments, with an additional equally good analysis about how taxation can be used to address concerns about global warming.
0コメント