Simmons, Hirsch: Era of cheap oil is over

Forget about cheap gasoline, today’s low oil price masks a looming energy crisis that could dwarf the current economic problems.

If you thought things couldn’t get any worse than a collapse of the global financial markets, think again. The economic meltdown is a good reason to be gloomy, for sure, but an under-reported study by the world’s leading energy agency recently raised the spectre of a collapse in the global energy market too.

The steep fall in oil prices during the last few months of 2008 prompted many people to think that the run-up to $147 a barrel was an aberration

Indeed, the collapse in oil prices is accelerating this trend. Non-traditional projects that were profitable when prices were high, such as Canada’s oil sands and fields that are deep underwater, are now being postponed or even scrapped. At the same time, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) cut production targets in December in a desperate bid to reverse the decline. That move seems to have had some effect, but there is now a fear that supply in the oil market will be dangerously out of sync with demand when the economy starts to recover.

“We will work our way through these financial problems, but what would be really unfortunate is that once things bounce back, oil prices will bounce back too,” said Matt Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Company International, at a roundtable held in mid-December. He says that supply shortages could help oil prices soar through $147 as unhindered as a hot knife cuts through butter.

Finance Asia