Gasoline too expensive? Here's a solution:

or



or in case somebody's forgotten how:



although, let's beware as all of that might lead to this:



Have a Nice Weekend!

[FIN] Onko öljyn hinta puhdasta spekulaatiota?

Taloussanomat jatkavat öljyn hinnan uutisointia. Tällä kertaa aiheena on öljyn hinnalla spekulointi. Kommentit uutisen perässä osoittavat, että ihmisillä on vahva epäilys markkinoita kohtaan, mutta hyvin vähän ymmärrystä niiden toiminnasta.

Raakaöljyfutuureilla on vaikea spekuloida.

Miksi? Futuuri on sopimus toimituksesta.

Jos haluaa spekuloida, on käytännössä otettava futuurin takaama öljytoimitus vastaan ja varastoitavat öljy - eli vedettävä myyntierä pois markkinoilta.

Ainastaan tämä voi luoda keinotekoisen tarjontavajeen suhteessa kysyntään, mikä puolestaan voi saada hinnan nousuun: keinottelijat ostavat öljyä, eivätkä myy sitä markkinoille vaan varastoivat sen, jolloin syntyy vaje ja hinta nousee.

Ihan perustason talousteoriaa hinnanmuodostuksesta.

Kuitenkin öljyvarastot ovat maailmanlaajuisesti lähellä ennätysalhaita lukemia.

Eli jos öljyn hinnanmuodostus on spekulaatiota, niin mihin se kaikki markkinoilta pois vedetty öljy on varastoitu? Öljyspekulanttien taskuihin? Tynnyreihin takapihalla? Tuskin.

Tämä kaikki näyttäisi kertovan, että spekulaatio ei voi olla keskeinen syy öljyn spottihinnan nousuun.

Toki todella pitkän maturiteetin futuurisopimuksissa voi olla spekulaatiota: sijoittavat uskovat, että öljyn hinta on tulevaisuudessa korkeampi. Kukaanhan ei tätä voi varmuudella tietää. Joten kyseessä on 'normaalia' markkinoiden spekulaatiota.

Mutta tämä on eri asia kuin päivän hinta.

Päivän hinta muodostuu markkinoilla olevan fyysisen öljyn tarjonnan ja sen kysynnän määrän suhteen. On toisarvoista mitä spekulantti on maksanut futuurisopimuksesta joulukuun 2008-öljylle: markkinat maksavat hinnan sen mukaan, kuinka paljon öljyä on markkinoilla tarjolla, eikä sen hinnan mukaan, mitä spekulantti omasta pienestä öljymäärästään haluaa.

Pitää myös muistaa: että spekulantti ei voi istua öljyn päällä kovin kauaa ja toivoa, että hinta nousee. Öljyn päällä istuminen tarkoittaa varastoimista, mikä luo kuluja, joka laskee tuottoa. Tämän takia öljy virtaa päivämarkkinoilla kovin ohuiden varastojen läpi. Spekulantit eivät siis istuta öljyä varastoissa odottelemassa hintojen nousua.

Toki futuurihinta voi vaikuttaa öljyn päivähintaan - kyse ei siis ole puhtaasta kysynnän ja tarjonnan volyymin kohtaamisesta.

Mutta öljyn hinnan nelinkertaistuminen muutaman vuoden sisällä kertoo jostain muusta kuin pelonsekaisesta pakosta ostaa öljyä mihin hintaan tahansa.

Näyttäisi siis siltä, että kun öljyn hinta nousee kuten viime vuosina, mutta syy on pääosin jossain aivan muualla kuin finanssispekulaatiossa.

Oil in Pictures: GDP vs Oil use (per capita)

ELM (?) in Pictures: Net oil exports for 2007

The image says it all.



Among the biggest falling exporters were Iran and KSA, which according to the official truth should not be over their peaks.

This is not encouraging, whichever way one looks at it.

[FIN] Indonesia - entinen öljymahti - eroaa OPECista

Indonesia on tehnyt sen, mitä kaikki asiaa seuranneet odottivat: se erosi OPEC:ista.

Indonesian kohtalo on ollut selvillä jo vuonna 1997, kaksi vuotta sen jälkimmäisen
öljytuotantohuipun jälkeen.

Maan muuttuminen nettotuojaksi on osa samaa kehitystä, joka on edessä kaikilla mailla, kunnes tuotavaa ei enää ole. Kaikki valtiot käyttävät öljyä. Ne jotka eivät tuota sitä yli oman tarpeen, joutuvat tuomaan sitä.

Mitä tapahtuu, kun yhdelläkään maalla ei riitä öljyä vientiin?

Meksiko seurannee Indonesian kohtaloa viiden vuoden sisällä, ja kannattaa muistaa, että kyseessä on yksi Yhdysvaltain suurimmista nettoviejistä. Yhdysvallat kuluttaa n. 25% maailman kaikesta raakaöljystä. Kun Meksiko ei enää pysty toimittamaan, täytyy USA:n etsiä sitä muualta. Chavezin ja Kanadan varaan Yhdysvaltojen on hankala laskea. Geopoliittinen tilanne tullee kiristymään entisestään.

Venäjän öljytuotanto on tiettävästi huipulla tai hyvin lähellä. Venäjä ei myöskään mielellään lähde laskemaan hintoja markkinoilla, koska Putinin ja nykyhallinnon suosio perustuu öljydollareiden jatkuvaan virtaan maahan, jonka talous on muuten hyvin yksipuolinen ja ongelmallinen.

Saudi-Arabian kykyä nostaa tuotantoaan luvattuun 10-12 Mt/pv epäillään vahvasti perustuen geologiseen dataan kentiltä. Vaikka Saudit lupaavat pystyvänsä nostamaan tuotantoa ja IEA on odottanut heidän tuplaavan tuotantonsa vuosikymmenen sisällä, tämä vaikuttaa päivä päivältä epäuskottavammalta.

Kaikkea tätä kärjistää tuottavien maiden valtava öljyn kotimarkkinoiden kulutuksen hintatuki, joka lisää kotimaan kulutusta (Kiina, Lähi-Idän maat, Indonesia, jne). Näissä maissa polttoaineiden hinta on keinotekoisen alhaalla (1/5 - 1/10 Euro-hinnoista), jotta köyhillä kansalaisilla on varaa polttoaineiseen. Ilman polttoainetukia nykyhallinto olisi todennäköisesti kansannousun tai ainakin vakavan poliittisen kriisin kourissa. Toisaalta kasvava öljyn hinta ei mahdollista kulutuksen subventointia loputtomiin, eikä se pitkällä tähtäimellä ole järkevää, koska raha on poissa kaikesta muusta maan sisäisestä kehittämisestä.

Kun päälle laskee vielä, että näiden maiden oma kysyntä kasvaa nopeammin kuin geologinen tuotantopotentiaali (joka on todellista tuotantoa pienempi), niin on todennäköistä, että kaikki em. maat tulevat muuttumaan nettotuojiksi, ennen kuin öljyn tuotanto saavuttaa huippunsa. Siis, mikäli jollain toisella on vielä tarjota öljyä vientiin (kymmenen pistettä sille, joka keksii mikä tämä maa voisi olla).

Eli öljyä ei riitä meille, jotka sitä käytämme emmekä tuota (lue: OECD+useimmat kehittyvät valtiot).

Kannattaa googlettaa: "Export Land Model", mikäli käsite ei ole jo tuttu.

IEA liputti juuri viime viikon lopulla uudet riskit öljyn riittävyydelle. Uusi arvio on vielä rankempi kuin aikaisemmat synkät marraskuun 2007 näkymät. Vuoteen 2015 mennessä tarvittavista 37.5 miljoonasta päivittäisestä tuotantotynnyristä 25 miljoonaa oli arvioitu ehtivän tuotantoon. Nyt tämä arvio on osoittanut optimistiseksi ja nyt IEA pitää lukuja vieläkin hälyyttävämpinä.

Fatih Birol IEA:sta - normaalisti hyvin konservatiivisesta energiajärjestöstä - on soittanut hälytyskelloja jo vuoden ja todennut useaan kertaan:

"Kun öljystä tulee pulaa, maailman talouden pyörät irtoavat." - Fatih Birol, IEA:n pääekonomisti

IEA ennustaa virallisesti öljypulaa vasta vuonna 2011. Tämä voi kuitenkin jo muuttua 2008-2009 aikana.

Mikäli näin, on kaikki tämä nykyinen, n. 130 USD/tynnyri on vain alkusoittoa.

Tämän lisäksi öljyn futuurimarkkinoiden maturiteettikäyrät ovat kääntyneet käänteisistä normaaleiksi alle kuukaudessa.

Eli öljy vuonna 2010 maksaa enemmän kuin vuonna 2009. Öljy on siis vain kallistumassa, futuurimarkkinoiden mielestä. Tämä signaali jatkuu aina vuoteen 2015 saakka, ellei ylikin. Kukaan idiootti ei spekuloi futuurimarkkinoilla vuoden 2015-maturiteettisopimuksilla.

Kysessä on markkinoiden näkemys hinnan perusmuodostumisen muuttumisesta.

Moni ei ymmärrä, että hyödykkeiden futuurimarkkinoilla 'normaali' on tekninen termi, eikä suinkaan tarkoita, että se olisi normaalia.

Päinvastoin. Markkinat eivät ole koskaan aikaisemmin kokeneet vastaavaa muutosta ja Financial Times kommentoi, että tämä johtunee siitä, että markkinat uskovat öljyn tuotantohuipun olevan käsillä. Joko geologisista, taloudellisista tai poliittisista syistä.

Syyllä ei ole merkitystä. Kun öljyä on joka päiväi vähemmän, hinta tulee nousemaan vielä lisää, vaikka se olisi jos ennestään kallista.

Öljyn kysyntä ei ole talousteoreettisesti kovin elastista. Eli kova hinta ei suoraan leikkaa kysyntää. Lisäksi öljyn kulutus korreloi erittäin vahvasti talouskasvun kanssa: kun kulutus laskee, laskee usein myös talous.

Teorian mukaan maailma tarvitsee n. 1.6-2% vuotuisen kasvun öljyn tuotantokapasiteettiin, jotta työllisyyden ylläpitävää min. 2% talouskasvua saadaan pidettyä yllä.

Piakkoin saamme kaikki testata tuon teorian toimivuutta käytännössä.

Gas Price - How much is too much?

A very unscientific and informal polling of close circle of friends found out that the gasoline price would have to double to have a significant impact on the amount of driving my friends do.

Now, that doubling would mean that premium gasoline would have to cost a c. 3.1 EUR/litre (roughly 5 USD / litre).

Considering Americans are crying bloody murder already and they are paying a mere 4 USD/gallon (c. 1.3 USD / litre) for their gas - well, one has to pause to think.

Yes, Americans drive a lot. Everywhere. Some even drive to walk the dog.

Yes, Americans drive fuel hogs that slurp up a gallon of gas just to get started.

If Europeans, with much less GDP/citizen are already paying more than twice for their fuel could stomach another doubling of gasoline prices, then Americans still have a long way to go before any gas price hikes starts really to cut down on driving. Meaning that 90% switches to a lower fuel consumption car, second car (and third and fourth) car is sold, rides are shared and miles driven per year is reduced permanently by at least a quarter.

So, yes please, bring on the $200 barrel of oil. It's long overdue.

Of course the transport industry will be hurting by then and lobbying for gasoline tax breaks through transport strikes.

And if the UK and France 2000 experiences are any indication, governments everywhere will cave in. They will have to and transport is the lifeblood of the global JIT economy.

So, if in Europe the price of gasoline has a significant tax portion, which is likely to get reduced as oil prices rise, the question remains whether even $200 per barrel enough?

What is the real limit that breaks our silly driving habits - both in the US and in Europe - not to mention the developing countries that are subsidizing domestic gasoline use like madmen.

Only time will tell - and not a moment too soon.

What is Doomerism?

Peak oil doomerism is the notion that once we reach the peak, the decline will be rapid, all mitigation efforts will be next to useless and things will unfold too fast for any party to control - all this resulting us plunging into new dark age of anarchy. You know, Mad Max and all that.

There is a smallish, but growing and often vocal part of peak oil followers who subscribe to different levels and types of doomerism.

There are gung-ho survivalists ('Bring it on! I've got my guns loaded'), practical planners ('I've got lots of food stacked and am learning the basics of thrifty living'), financial security seekers ('How can I make money off peak oil, so I can end up on top when things fall apart'), eschatological christians ('This is god's punishment, you all deserve it, but I'm going to heaven') and Bayesian realists ('Yes, such a breakdown is a probability, but one which total likelihood is very difficult to assess and one which can be affected by one's own actions, so it's better to work to improve the positive than pre-emptively to start feeling sorry for oneself').

Now, we don't subscribe to doomerism here, with perhaps an exception of bayesian realism, which is based on notions of risks and unknowability.

The future is way too chaotic to plan, assess or to even know fully. It merely unfolds with all of it's surprises and often with a kind of glacial slowness, especially when compare to to how fast people thought things would unfold.

Further, it is important to look at history for clues: what happens when societies are starved for their lifeblood, the very essence that keeps the going: energy.

Joseph Tainter's and Jared Diamond's books on historical societal collapses offer some clues. Both have recognizes resource starvation as one reason for historical societal collapse. Energy of course is the ultimate resource, without which even life is not possible.

So, collapse is a possibility, but so is downsizing.

Downsizing societies means cutting down the complexity of societal functions to the level where energy is not 'wasted' to such a huge degree by most of the citizens. People will have to think what they do for their food, heating energy, building power and mobility. Think Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). This cannot be measured in dollars, it can only be measured in units of energy (kJ, kWh, etc). In a peak oil scenario energy is not free anymore in the sense it is today: it is not always available and when it is, the associated costs are very high and required outputs for the use of that energy determine the basic livelihood.

This requires downsizing of needless activities. It is important to remember also that 'needless' is always defined as a function of energy surplus: the more you have energy, the more of the previous needless activities become everyday standards and eventually seen as needed. The less energy you have and the reverse happens.

Societal changes take time: it is quite difficult for people to change unless there is a sudden state of emergency that binds everyone together to act in unison (think war). As such, the energy transitions need also be slow, to accommodate for the slowness in change of society.

Herein lies the crucial point when deciding about whether to be a doomer or not.

If you believe that the decline in available primary energy sources (oil, alternatives, coal, natgas) will be faster than the society's ability to cope with such decline, then the probability of a collapse rises.

If you believe that societies have an ability to downsize their activities and act in co-ordinated manner, when they have foreknowledge of what is to come, then an ordered transition is more likely.

How much of a transition and for how long a period is needed, that is anybody's guess. The point is relative speed of change here. Which changes faster: the availability of fuels or the societies' actions pre-empting this?

Now, some of you are crying that there is a third way: that there will not be any energy shortage. We'll just find or invent other energy sources that will supplant all fossil fuels, esp. the liquid types and bingo - problem solved.

This is another type of faith based position bordering on fallacy, not too distant removed from doomerism in it's structure. But that is a topic for another post.

Getting back to doomers, it appears that many of them do not have a lot of faith in the society, esp. the government. As such it is perhaps not a great surprise that a majority of doomers hail from the USA, where suspicion towards the government has always run quite high.

Another part of the doomer camp may not be so suspicious about the government, but they see the challenge ahead as so big in terms of infrastructure, manpower, money, time and natural resources - that they think no society, regardless of how perfect, will be able to pull it off. So, collapse it is for them as well.

Now, there are obvious probabilistic fallacies in both of these lines of reasoning. The first assumes that the government will always screw up, no matter what. The people in power and the context of the situation do not matter. Government is the Super-Murphian Fail-o-Tron, incapable of doing good.

The second line of reasoning assumes that the scale is so big that nothing can be done. This reasoning is problematic on two accounts. First is the idea that the scale, the speed of change and all possible new interventions are known in advance and can be assessed (aka 'the future can be known' fallacy). The second is the dichotomic either/or fallacy: either we can fend this off and continue business as usual, or then it's collapse. There appear no shades of grey in-between.

The government failing line of reasoning is a faith based fallacy, it cannot be argued against, as it really is not an argument. It is pure faith. One either has the religion or not. No amount of data or reasoning will convince most of these people otherwise.

The scale issue is more hard to tackle, but it also contains elements of faith: a belief that the future can be known combined with a lack of faith for positive surprising new developments, and faith that the scale of changes needed is indeed significantly bigger/faster than that of society's ability to carry out, and remains so throughout the whole ordeal.

The dichotomic thinking is a basic human reasoning fallacy, it is likely to be part of our evolutionary survival instinct that when we are faced with a threat of disproportionate size that is difficult to rapidly assess intellectually, we succumb to the 'fight or flight' type of polarize thinking. All other options disappear and the limbic system makes the decision for us. The only cure for this is post-shock rational analysis. Once we get over the initial shock and understand that the world didn't end, we can actually start assessing some parts of the situation and start acting on that information. Even if we still don't know the whole picture or know how things will turn out.

With all that said, it should be obvious to any reader that the likelihood of a severe transition, lots of difficult decisions and even a small probability of collapse has not gone away.

One should always remember that just like the dystopian future cannot be proven with 100% probability, the same stands for the utopian future.

More than that, the future is more than likely to be something in between (aka a shade of grey).

So, to mentally prepare, one can and maybe even should play thought games, but one should also never delude oneself to think that the evidence on table has finally and completely proven either future we us.

After all, there really is no fate, except what we make for ourselves.

IEA: Peak Oil Investments

Wall Street Journal leaked yesterday preliminary information on the forthcoming IEA oil suppy report. The forecast is grim: of the 37.5 Million barrels/day of additional production needed by 2015 to keep things chugging along in the business-as-usual scenario, only 25Million are accounted for. And even that estimate is starting to look optimistic to IEA.

That is, we are heading for even a bigger oil demand/supply crunch than IEA predicted only last year.

Of course, IEA is not a believer in current oil peak (of the geologically imposed variety). They are arguing that lack of investments in upstream production is hampering the supply of oil. Oil industry needs to invest more, especially in countries where they currently cannot (this is a geopolitical hint, if there ever was one).

In some ways one could argue that IEA is pointing out Peak Investments for Oil production, which is of course different from geologically imposed peak oil, when you just can't pump more oil per day regardless of how much you invest.

Whatever the underlying reasons, the end result is the same - for now: not enough oil.

In light of this the Goldman Sach forecast for oil of $200/barrel in 2009 doesn't sound far fetched at all. A bit more speculative capital into the futures market and it could even be a conservative estimate. If we are at peak and this becomes self-evident, then $200 may evenbecome the bottom baseline.

However, if things were to come to that, the world oil consumption would fall dramatically. Not even the oil producing countries & China can afford to subsidize their own internal use at those levels. Prices would have to fall.

And if they did not, we could only conclude that KSA had been full of hot air all along and that they had absolutely no spare capacity that they could have quickly put online. That in turn would be weighty evidence in favor of ASPO's argument that KSA is near peaking (geologically) and that it's not just about investments.

And if KSA is peaking, then according to Matthew Simmons, so is the world.

These feel truly the watershed years we are living right now.

"But what do the market say?"

The most often heard objection to a near peak peak oil hypothesis is this:

"Well, if the oil production were to peak, wouldn't the markets know this? Wouldn't the fact be somehow reflected in the prices?"

This used to be difficult to explain sufficiently to market fundamentalist bozos, who believe that 'markets know all' (i.e. omniscient). Trying to explain to these people the notion of information asymmetry is a true exercise in futility. Paradigm shift registers equally bad in their conceptually active vocabulary.

But now the markets have changed. Take a look at these curves.

Crude oil futures markets have gone from inverted to normal. That is, the price of a futures contract that supposedly guarantees a delivery of oil in the future is now going up as a function of contract maturity. Or more simply: the longer you wait, the more you will have to pay for your oil (according to the futures market).*

It doesn't help that the futures markets have been consistently wrong about the price of crude oil for the past six years. The markets are in constant normal backwardation. That is, those crude oil futures have earned a lot of people quite nice profits, because the markets have priced them way too low.

Jeff Veil wrote a good piece about this @ the Oil Drum, although the definition of contango is used somewhat confusingly. But that is beside the point as the fundamental change in price is what matters, not what we call it.

The change of the futures curve market to normal is funnily enough not 'normal' for crude oil futures market. It is in fact abnormal to futures traders.

In fact, traders quoted in The Financial Times yesterday had this to say:

"Veteran traders said they had never seen such a jump and said investors were increasingly betting that oil production would soon peak because of geopolitical and geological constraints."

This may well be it. The crucial tipping point for understanding. When the markets find out something, that something becomes - for better or worse, true or not - the truth. Politicians will soon follow, all singing in merry unison.

The question on everybody's lips is: What's going to happen next?

Brace yourself for a train crash in slow-motion.

* PS. Markets assume that a futures contract guarantees a delivery of goods for a contractual price on the date of the maturity. However, this only works as long as the markets function without fault. When the markets break down, derivates like the futures contracts can turn worthless and guarantee nothing about delivery. This is not as imaginary as it sounds. In general, derivate markets fault when they can no longer function. In the case of oil futures, until the stuff just isn't there in terms of the volume traded. So if you're thinking of dipping your toes into the futures market, proceed with caution: funny paper isn't the same as a barrel of oil.

Alternative oil in pictures

NB! There are no confidence intervals for those figures. If one was forced to make a guess based on best available data, the greenhouse reduction potential of ethanols would be greatly reduced. This all depends on production technology (how much oil, which ethanol source, where is cellulose shipped from, etc).

Further, reduction in greenhouse gases do not solve the problems that:

1. Many ethanols are energy losers (take in more fuel energy to make than give when burnt)
2. They do not scale to meet the rising liquid fuel demand (and the drop in oil production)

The Rape of the World

Tracy Chapman, over a video collage of our coming challenges (song from 1995, video from 2001).

Lyrics:

Mother of us all
Place of our birth
How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the wold
This the beginning of the end
This the most heinous of crimes
This the deadliest of sins
The greatest violation of all time
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world

You've seen her stripped mined
You've heard of bombs exploded - underground
You know the sun shines
Hotter than ever before
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world

Some claim to have crowned her
A queen
With cities of concrete and steel
But there is no glory no honor
In what results
From the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world

She has been clear-cut
She has been dumped on
She has been poisoned and beaten up
And we have been witness
To the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the world

If you look you'll see it with your own eyes
If you listen you will hear her cries
If you care you will stand and testify
And stop the rape of the world
Stop the rape of the world
Mother of us all
Mother of us all
Mother of us all
Mother of us all

A great song and a powerful performance, even if one doesn't agree with the message or the outlook.

The Death of the SUVs is only the beginning

Mike "Mish" Shedlock of the Mish's Global Economic Analysis blog fame has good commentary on the Boston Globe article about the death of SUVs. Finally American drivers are starting to see the light and are switching to more fuel efficient vehicles. This does not bode well for the already gasping American automakers, which can die for all we care. It's evolve or die. They have fought evolution for so many decades it was only fair if they went belly up. But of course they are politically too big to fail, but change their must and that change is going to be painful for them. They will have to dig up their old engineering books and start building aerodynamic, light, small, fuel efficient, low emission and safe cars. That will take some time, as after more than 50 years of reckless abandon in car design, they have probably not learned as much useful things as Toyota has forgotten about building good cars for the 21st century.

Now that American's are slowly starting to abandon the Stupid Useless Vehicle (aka SUV), will it change things in a material way?

The answer is a firm No.

US personal car fleet replacement rate is c. 2% per annum. The fastest car maker in the world (Toyota) has a product cycle of 7 years (from concept to production). Those slow down things a lot. The market share of hybrids is a paltry 3% of all cars sold in the US.

There are 300 million wasteful internal combustion cars in the USA. Changing 2% of USA car fleet to hybrids would cut oil consumption 1%, assuming all new cars sold were best-of breed hybrids and the old cars would actually be decommissioned from use and not sold as second hand cars, thus keeping within the car fleet pool (neither of which is going to happen, even if it's legislated as mandatory).

The worldwide oil depletion will be anything from 4-8% per annum once the final decline starts after the peak.

You do the math.

We are looking at death of more than just the SUVs.

If you drive a car, it's time you started preparing yourself mentally for the inevitable.

And no, no amount of hydrogen/biodiesel/electric/compressed air cars is going to change that equation on the mass scale. Yes, they will offer some local, temporal & small scale alternatives to some, but the world of driving is going to be a lot less congested in the 21st century.