l****z 发帖数: 29846 | 1 A World Remade by Fracking
With storage tanks full, panickers have no place to hoard oil in response to
Middle East fears.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
March 31, 2015 6:52 p.m. ET
If not for fracking, oil would probably be $200 a barrel and gasoline $6.50
in the U.S.
Western economies would likely be in free fall. The grudging U.S. recovery
would be in retreat. The modest and possibly illusory green shoots seen in
Europe, largely a function of cheap oil and a strong dollar, would wither.
Japan would be even more of a write-off than it already is.
Russia would be even more emboldened in its geopolitical predations.
Vladimir Putin would be raking in vaster bucks, rather than vastly
diminished bucks, for his oil. Europe and the U.S., feeling broke and
bedraggled, would be even less eager for confrontation.
Speculating about counterfactuals can be a foolish exercise, but oil traders
usually take fright at geopolitical upsets that threaten supplies out of
the Middle East. Yemen sits at the narrow Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint through
which 3.8 million barrels a day flow from Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea terminals
and elsewhere to the world. Yemen’s upheaval comes at the hands of Houthi
tribalists backed by Iran, whose military already threatens another key
Mideast oil chokepoint, at the exit of the Persian Gulf.
To register panic about all this and drive up prices, however, oil buyers
have to be able to hoard oil. That’s becoming all but impossible. A huge
amount of surplus production is already sloshing around the world, mostly as
a result of U.S. fracking. As a consequence, storage tanks are full to
overflowing. Panickers and speculators may well be physically unable to
drive up prices significantly if they wanted to.
Even with the world increasingly clear-eyed about the consequences of the
fracking revolution, if not the unprecedentedly sharp episodic growth in U.S
. output last year, oil still topped $100 a barrel as recently as eight
months ago.
To belabor what was once obvious, instability in the Middle East typically
has been bullish for oil prices, as witnessed by various Arab-Israeli wars
and Iraq’s wars with its neighbors. Saudi jets have already entered the
fight to stop Iran’s allies in Yemen. If necessary, Saudi troops will
likely intervene on the ground, waging a fight that would also be a fight
for the interests of global oil consumers.
A direct confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia over Yemen could be
shaping up. Iran is on the march in Iraq and Syria. Much of the Middle East
is in chaos. That all this could be happening and yet oil pundits are more
concerned about oil dropping to $20 a barrel, because of a lack of storage
to accommodate our abundance, testifies to a geopolitical somersault the
world is still trying to make sense of.
Fracking overnight has relieved Saudi Arabia of its swing-producer dominance
. Fracking overnight has relegated the Middle East to a sideshow, albeit a
still-important sideshow, in the world economy.
Things change fast and could change back. A sizable share of the world’s
oil still flows from the Persian Gulf and so far production has not been
disrupted. Prices would shoot up—they’re already creeping up. But a weight
on U.S. fracking would also be lifted. At prices below $50, much fracking
becomes long-term unprofitable. But then there’s the flip-side: the
flexibility exhibited by the U.S. wildcat sector, allowing drilling to ramp
up quickly in response to higher prices, helping to counteract any damage to
global growth.
Naturally we come to the potentially least important piece of today’s mé
lange: the Obama administration’s negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
In its saner moments, the administration allows that the U.S. cannot secure
Iranian sanctions for the long run unless it’s also prepared to negotiate
over the concerns that led to sanctions being imposed in the first place.
Iran wants sanctions lifted and doesn’t intend to abandon its pursuit of
nuclear capability. Banish any other thought from your head. Not only are
potent swaths of the Iranian elite getting rich directly and indirectly off
the nuclear program. The regime would likely fatally discredit itself if it
now disavowed a nuclear quest for which it has inflicted so much suffering
and penury on the Iranian people.
Not going to happen. So unless the purpose is simply to let Team Obama get
out of town without Iran calling its bluff on Iran’s nuclear effort, a
useful deal would be one that legitimizes the continuation of sanctions,
despite the clamor of the Europeans, Russians and Chinese to resume business
with Tehran, once it becomes clear the Iranians aren’t going to deliver.
Such a deal could make sense, but from Israel and Saudi Arabia you hear a
different fear. By design or by default, the deal being negotiated would end
up formalizing a U.S. tendency to cede its Mideast power broker role to
Iran. Why? Because, thanks to fracking, the U.S. just doesn’t care that
much about the Middle East anymore. | d**********0 发帖数: 13081 | 2 非常奇怪。 Fracking 已经发展了那么多年了。 但好像只有到了今年, 才忽然被
人发现似的。。
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【在 l****z 的大作中提到】 : A World Remade by Fracking : With storage tanks full, panickers have no place to hoard oil in response to : Middle East fears. : By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. : March 31, 2015 6:52 p.m. ET : : : If not for fracking, oil would probably be $200 a barrel and gasoline $6.50 : in the U.S. : Western economies would likely be in free fall. The grudging U.S. recovery
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