No Oil Bubble

More Speculation About Those Oil Speculators, August 2008

Jim Hamilton objects to the Washington Post article A Few Speculators Dominate Vast Market for Oil Trading, by David Cho.

Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets, Interim Report on Crude Oil, Washington D.C, July 2008

The Interagency Task Force’s preliminary assessment is that current oil prices and the increase in oil prices between January 2003 and June 2008 are largely due to fundamental supply and demand factors. The preliminary analysis to date does not support the proposition that speculative activity has systematically driven changes in oil prices.

Why does gasoline cost so much? by Lutz Kilian, July 2008

Gas prices are a product of supply and demand. This column attributes recent gas price increases to stagnant oil supplies and growing global demand from emerging Asian economies – not speculators. Additional shocks to the US refining capacity further tightened gas prices in the US. These forces will likely keep gas prices high for the foreseeable future.

Oil Turbulence in the Next Decade, An Essay on High Oil Prices in a Supply-constrained World, jan-Hein Jesse and Coby Van der Linde, Clingendael International Energy Programme, June 2008

A discussion of the geopolitical tensions that are rising due to accelerating global demand growth and new oil supplies being concentrated in an even smaller group of countries.

Emerging Markets and the Decline of Exportable Oil by James Barrineau, AllianceBernstein Research Paper, March 2008

In the 1970s and 1980s, China was a net exporter of oil to global markets. But by 1993, after almost two decades of breakneck economic growth, the country was consuming so much of its own oil that it had exhausted its ability to export. Now, a similar pattern looks set to be replayed across much of the developing world.