White Noise

As you look to the future in an uncertain world, ask yourself some key questions. In five years will we have higher inflation than today? That’s always a tough question, but perhaps the succeeding questions will help shed some light. Will the price of oil be higher in five years? Given the volatile combination of war, political unrest, the arrival of peak oil, and massive demand growth from Asia, the odds of higher oil prices are pretty good. The more important, but unknowable, question is whether the price will be $60 per barrel or $160 per barrel.

Looking out 15 to 20 years, the demand side could get frantic. Currently the U.S. uses 22 million barrels of oil per day for around 280 million people. Asia uses roughly 20 million barrels daily for 3.6 billion people (including India). Over the next twenty years, the rapidly growing East should easily exceed 40 million barrels per day. With the world pumping at capacity, one wonders where will all that new oil come from, and at what price?

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