At $100 a barrel, there's a megaton of money hunting for alternatives to OPEC oil, from pre-salt to photovoltaics and insulation, fracking, thorium reactors powering electric cars using Halo and Google autocar technology, and moving to a warmer climate.
Enjoy your $100 a barrel while it lasts because it won't last long. There's downward pressure. The burgeoning wealth and temporary population growth towards 7 billion people stops the slide, but it's inexorable, relentless, inevitable and merciless. After Peak People in 2037, there will be major paradigm shifts. Unless they unfortunately happen sooner such as due to unforeseen sea level rise not associated with global warming but with bolide, H5N1 mutant marauding of uncontrolled nature, successful re-enactment of WWI the start of which is now being celebrated with a searchlight into the sky here in Lovely London and by gunfire in Ukraine and Iraq, quantitative easing implosion per financial relativity theory into Black Scholes despair, or due to some unknown unknown.
Note that gold is made of oil so there's downward pressure on gold price too even while quantitative easing puffed up the US$ like a balloon which would suggest the opposite. Many disappointed gold bugs are still waiting for hyperinflation of their stash. They might wait longer than Japanese have done for resurrection of the Nikkei to 40,000.
Mqurice |
