Pricey oil won’t hurt Asia: Experts

Despite the current high oil prices, Asian economies will continue to book high growth and drive the world’s economy with their massive resources, according to experts attending the Boao Forum for Asia here.

Kim Tai Yoo, chair professor of techno-economics at Seoul National University said the current level of oil prices would still be affordable for Asia’s major oil-importing economies like Japan, South Korea, China and India, thanks to their massive foreign exchange reserves.
“For Asian oil-importing economies like South Korea, the problem is not the price, whether it’s low or high, but the issue is price stability and energy security,” he told a panel discussion on energy security in Asia here Saturday.

Fu Chengyu, president of Chinese state-owned oil firm CNOOC, agreed, saying that the current price of some US$60 per barrel of oil was still affordable for countries like China.

Oil prices at this level, he said, would not stall the growth of many economies in Asia, as many of the oil price increases in the past five years had been contributed to not only by rising demand, but also the depreciation of the U.S. dollar and inflation.

He noted that if depreciation of the U.S. dollar and inflation were taken into account, the current price of oil was equal to $40 per barrel five years ago.

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