The oil price might surpass the barrier of $ 500 for the year 2012. For that year the United Kingdom reserves of the North Sea will be in it final stage.
This fact will cause a revolution in the world energy and will show the weakness of our natural resources.
The appreciation on the oil price has a base: the historical behavior of the prices. For example, for the year 1970 the oil price was of hardly more of $ 1 per barrel, but ten years after, in the year 1980, the oil price reached the figure of $ 40. This represented an augment of more of 3,000 per cent in a period of ten years. The prices experimented a sustained trend to the increase in those ten years, but an event, the Sha of Iran fall in the year 1979, accelerated the crisis and the oil price reached in 1980 it major level in the history until then.
If we consider the year 2002 ---after September 11 2002--- as the year of minor prices of the oil ---$ 16 per barrel in December of that year--- and we consider a growth of 3,000 percent for the year 2012, the estimation of a price of $500 has a real sense. Remember that a similar phenomenon already happened between the years 1970 and 1980 as was explained in the previous paragraph.
Nobody can predict the future with precision but the lessons of the history are a true source of knowledgment. The history teaches us that a great jump might occur in the oil price if a fact sufficiently important happens in the market. The figures of the world oil reserves demonstrate that is in the North Sea the place where the oil will finish first. The most important oil companies of the world are aware of this fact, some governments too but they do not recognize it in public form.
A jump in the oil prices of the magnitude considered would cause a real economic crisis with severe implications in the goods and services production worldwide.
The book A Statistical Yearbook 2008, Running Out: How Global Shortages Change the Economic Paradigm, (Algora Publishing, New York, 2008) presents a complete vision of the natural resources situation and especially of the petroleum.
pablorafael_gonzalez@yahoo.com
On June 3 2014 the EIA confirmed the depletion of the UK oil in the year 2012. This is the link: http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=UK&scr=email
ResponderEliminarSo far, the oil price explosion has been avoided by the production of fracking that has changed the scenario. The key now is in the veracity of the statistics on fracking.