Twenty years to the day after the crash of the global stock markets, could the price of a barrel of oil, close to its historical record of 101 dollars at the time of the Iranian Islamic revolution, in turn become the disruptive grain of sand, the stinging rebuttal of the effects deemed regulatory of globalization? When asked, specialists enumerate a series of reasons while admitting that nothing truly justifies such a surge in the price of black gold around 90 dollars. Chinese demand, sustained due to its double-digit economic growth and probably underestimated, does not, however, constitute a new fact. The United States’ consumption of 20% of global production is offset by a clear slowdown in American growth. International or geopolitical tensions? Once again, experts feel the same way: a Turkish military operation near the Iraqi Kurdish oil fields of Kirkuk, which Ankara admittedly wouldn’t mind getting hold of through Turkmen intermediaries, would have only limited consequences on potential supply difficulties. The nuclear crisis with Iran? A potential Israeli-American military intervention would target only the uranium enrichment centers, and Tehran has as much interest in selling its crude as the West has in buying it. The depletion of supplies? There is a shortfall of between 1 and 1.5 million barrels to meet Western needs, but the “Majors” retort with irony, the fear of shortages dates back to 1920 when it was already estimated that “proven reserves would barely reach 1950!” Producer countries, for their part, consider the market “well-supplied” with sufficient undisclosed reserves accumulated over more than 30 years. Certainly, operating costs for geographically increasingly remote deposits and in politically highly unstable areas, along with increasingly deep drilling, contribute to some extent to the increase in the average price of a barrel. But didn’t the company Total estimate its extraction cost around ten dollars in 2006?
What the experts perhaps hesitate to consider in their calculation, for example, for the price of “Brent,” which determines 60% of the price of oils extracted worldwide, or that of the “OPEC Basket” since June 2005, is “speculation.” Or, according to an Australian economist cited by a major daily, “the irrational exuberance” of investors, notably the famous hedge funds, attracted to the volatile commodity market by gains now as massive as they are swift, and far superior to the returns from more conventional financial investments. Consequence: a speculative range of 20 to 30 dollars per barrel, figures well known to Western leaders. Also to blame, are the trading companies, most of which have become completely independent of the oil industry and represent multiple owners in cascade during global transactions.
Ultimate paradox: when the proceeds from these additional profits, with no apparent link to the physical market, are passed on to the consumer at the pump, it is always the budgets of economically disadvantaged, or even heavily indebted households that bear the brunt of this artificial surcharge. Oil wealth inversely proportional to financial poverty? A highly topical question at a time when the Head of State considers the fight against poverty a “major political challenge” of his five-year term.
