The world oil price has plunged 16% since the start of October – which must be a boost to many near moribund G20 economies. Yet the media mostly ignores this.
Facts are that cheaper oil plus recent changes in the makeup of the US Congress makes it less likely that any hand wringing hopes for deep emissions reductions will be honoured.
Another angle on this here:
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11231383/Oil-price-slump-to-trigger-new-US-debt-default-crisis-as-Opec-waits.html
The article seems determined to look on the dark side, focusing on supposed dangers to the world economy if highly leveraged oil fracking companies in the US go bust with lower oil prices. Nowhere is it stated though how much of the US economy those companies represent – surely nothing like the bubble there was in the housing market or the dotcom economy. Qwikipedia says the entire mining sector, presumably including oil and everything else they dig for, accounts for 2% of US GDP.
Still, it has some interesting sidelights:
The most vulnerable countries to an oil price fall are not the USA but Libya, Iran, Venezuela and Russia.
OPEC meets on 27 November could tighten quotas, thus propping up prices, or loosen them, cutting prices further to grab more market share. The quoted expert expects them to do nothing.
The article is full of gloom but as you say Warwick the situation is not gloomy at all. Despite all the obstacles put in its way by green policies and Obama, American business has once again seized an improved technology to supply a needed good at a cheaper price. In the process it is helping to demolish a global cartel several members of which have long made mischief with their oil-gotten gains.