Amigos,
Los principales medios están proponiendo un debate para que EUA tome
acciones respecto a la reducción del consumo interno de petróleo,
coordinación de aumento de producción de países amigos, cambio de su
política energética favoreciendo el uso de fuentes de energía alternas, y
una estrategia política para impulsar la reducción de los precios. Ver
artículo.
Comentarios bienvenidos.
Saludos,
Hector Touzet
plaen.blogspot.com
HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=pf"washingtonpost.com
The Power of Oil Consumers
By Henry A. Kissinger and Martin Feldstein
Thursday, September 18, 2008; A21
The tripling in the price of oil from $30 a barrel in 2001 to around $100
today represents the largest transfer of wealth in human history. The 13
HYPERLINK
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/OPEC?tid=informline"OPEC
members alone are expected to earn more than $1 trillion this year from oil
sales. Inevitably, this will bring with it major political consequences. Not
the least significant aspect of this political and economic earthquake is
that it is being exacted upon the world's most powerful nations by some of
the world's weakest. Yet the victims stand by impotently as if the price of
oil were some natural event determined by a competitive economic market that
is not and cannot be influenced by political forces.
But the price of oil is not determined by a traditional competitive market.
Major producers such as the members of OPEC can and do raise or lower the
price of oil by reducing or increasing their rate of production. And since
today's oil price also reflects expectations of future supply and demand,
these monopolistic suppliers are able to compound the volatility of the
market through statements about their future intentions.
The monopoly suppliers will continue to have strong market power until the
consuming nations sharply reduce their dependence on imported oil and
develop a political strategy to counter political manipulation of the oil
market or the use of the vast OPEC surpluses to blackmail their economies or
individual industries.
The oil-consuming nations are in a position, however, to shape both the
global economic and political balance, provided they coordinate and, to some
extent, pool their efforts. America should play a major role in this effort.
Rather than wait passively for the next blow to fall, the major consuming
nations -- the Group of Seven, together with India, China and Brazil --
should establish a coordinating group to shift the long-term trends of
supply and demand in their favor and to end the blackmail of the strong by
the weak.
Coordinated actions could bring down the price of oil by reducing and, in
the long term, eliminating the speculative pressures behind recent price
rises as well as by establishing a coherent supply policy. Many of the
measures recommended to achieve this -- such as conservation and the
development of domestic oil supplies and alternative sources of renewable
energy -- will take years to become effective. However, even before the
balance of market power has been transformed, the expectation of change
would reduce the price of oil. This would especially become the case if the
political impetus behind oil pricing could be reduced or eliminated.
A cooperative policy should also include emergency sharing arrangements to
counter selective boycotts or supply interruptions. In the 1970s, the
creation of the HYPERLINK
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/International+Energy+...
?tid=informline"International Energy Agency, with its plans for emergency
assistance and financial cooperation, did much to mitigate the rise of oil
prices. A broader effort is needed now.
This year's price rise was driven by changes in the expected long-term
demand for oil while supplies remained largely static. New projections of
rapidly increasing demand in China and India and of declines in production
in Russia and Mexico drove up oil prices because of the expectation of a
collapse in the balance between supply and demand. By the same token,
actions that would slow the growth of demand and speed the rise in supply
would translate relatively quickly into a lower current price.
A change in U.S. national energy policies is essential. But those policies
would be much more effective as part of a coordinated international effort
to increase supply and reduce demand in the global energy market. Such a
policy must take into account the needs of differing regions and achieve
compatibility in policies on conservation and global warming. In the United
States, oil is used primarily to make gasoline for automobiles. Only about
one-third of oil consumption is for non-transportation uses, primarily in
petroleum-based chemical firms. Outside the United States, oil is primarily
used for heating and electricity generation. Coordinated policies should
therefore focus on reducing U.S. gasoline use, while other countries could
contribute by shifting from oil to hydropower, clean coal technology or
nuclear power to generate electricity.
Increasing the supply of oil deserves to be a high priority. American
policies to increase supply by expanding drilling and by developing oil
shale need to be matched by policies to increase supply abroad. That
requires more investment by state-owned oil providers, the primary sources
of oil today.
The oil consumers are in a position to use diplomatic measures to establish
a new balance between producers and consumers. Efforts to induce producers
to increase supply should be complemented by policies to stabilize the
political situation in oil-producing countries such as Nigeria and to
increase protection of oil shipping routes such as the Strait of Hormuz.
Some of the policies to reduce the price of oil would also reduce U.S.
dependence on imported oil without eliminating it. The United States will
remain an oil importer until gasoline for automobiles is replaced by
batteries, hydrogen or compressed natural gas. At the same time, for an
interim period, efforts to increase the supply of oil and other carbon fuels
may make it more difficult to reduce carbon emissions. But because of the
profound political consequences of high oil prices, reducing those prices
must be the immediate paramount objective.
© 2008 HYPERLINK
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Tribune+Company?tid=i...
ine"Tribune Media Services Inc.
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