They know. What are they planning to do about it?
World's Seven Largest Economies (G7) Admit They Have No Idea How Much Oil Is Left - Issue Emergency Call for Transparency at DC Summit
WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Worried soaring oil prices could hurt the best global prospects in years, finance chiefs from wealthy nations met on Friday to try to work out what lay behind the surge and how to buffer the economic expansion.
Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers met at the tightly guarded U.S. Treasury building over lunch and were to work through the afternoon before a dinner with Chinese counterparts that has currency reform on the menu.
The officials will set out their world-view at about 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT) in a communiqué sources said would include a call to bolster oil-market monitoring to make it easier to discern if scarce supply, hefty demand or market speculation lay behind crude's drive to record levels.
The answer to this question is critical.
It could affect policy responses big oil consumers must adopt -- higher interest rates to stem inflation or a renewed focus on finding new energy sources -- and may offer key information on how long the price rise will last.
"High and volatile oil prices pose a risk to the outlook, dampening consumer spending and company profitability," Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, warned on Friday. He said it was vital for the G7 "to improve the transparency and the efficiency of the oil market."
Ministers are seeking energy market transparency to discover if world oil supplies may be scantier than they thought in May when they urged producers to open the spigots…
Another G7 official suggested the rise in oil costs was rooted in such fundamental factors as over-estimated supplies and was not solely due to speculation.
There is "a recognition that oil resources are scarcer than was thought a few years ago," the official said. "We agree there is a need for more transparency on the potential supply of various areas."
If scarcity is the chief culprit, the oil price shock may not prove as temporary as hoped, the official said.
_______________
In the G7 and around the world from the Philippines, to Brunei, to Scotland, to New Zealand, to China, to Thailand, to Japan, to Britain, to the US, many nations are either urgently looking at and discussing impending economic collapse, blackouts and food shortages. Others are already experiencing blackouts, brownouts, power cutbacks, or projecting possible lethal power outages this winter. Economic concerns may very soon be pushed aside by issues of simple survival. China's food production has been plummeting for years and overall the entire planet is yielding less and less food which requires ten calories of hydrocarbon energy for every calorie eaten.
The bottom line is that the G7 have admitted that demand has outpaced supply and that due to cooked books and secrecy, they really have no idea how much oil is left, or available for production (two different questions). Within months there will be no more important story on the planet. After that, and as the G7 must begin to offer explanations and answers for all mankind - let alone the soon-to-be anachronistic financial markets - we will be there, dogging every announcement with our research. And we will be demanding honest answers.
In various forms and degrees, panic may ensue.
Almost every nation is now in a scramble for energy. On Septmeber 14, as reported in the Independent, Tullow oil, one of Britain's largest oil companies, warned of blackouts and heating shortages this winter. Why? The North Sea fields are drying up faster than a pair of swim trunks on a hot summer day. A Times of London story the same day warned of power cuts this winter, along with shortages of heating oil. These developments prompted Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to warn the G7 on October 1 that oil prices were a threat to global economic "recovery" (Reuters). Isn't it amazing that the financial guys never talk about survival? They only talk about growth and recovery. That's why economics and the current financial paradigm need to go the way of the Dinosaurs and Saber-toothed tigers almost immediately.
As we have said from the start, and as I conclude in my just-released book Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, we will change nothing at all and we will come, collectively as a species, to a sad and miserable end unless we first change the way money works. That, and nothing less, will make a sizeable difference in the outcome.
Micheal Ruppert
World's Seven Largest Economies (G7) Admit They Have No Idea How Much Oil Is Left - Issue Emergency Call for Transparency at DC Summit
WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Worried soaring oil prices could hurt the best global prospects in years, finance chiefs from wealthy nations met on Friday to try to work out what lay behind the surge and how to buffer the economic expansion.
Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers met at the tightly guarded U.S. Treasury building over lunch and were to work through the afternoon before a dinner with Chinese counterparts that has currency reform on the menu.
The officials will set out their world-view at about 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT) in a communiqué sources said would include a call to bolster oil-market monitoring to make it easier to discern if scarce supply, hefty demand or market speculation lay behind crude's drive to record levels.
The answer to this question is critical.
It could affect policy responses big oil consumers must adopt -- higher interest rates to stem inflation or a renewed focus on finding new energy sources -- and may offer key information on how long the price rise will last.
"High and volatile oil prices pose a risk to the outlook, dampening consumer spending and company profitability," Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, warned on Friday. He said it was vital for the G7 "to improve the transparency and the efficiency of the oil market."
Ministers are seeking energy market transparency to discover if world oil supplies may be scantier than they thought in May when they urged producers to open the spigots…
Another G7 official suggested the rise in oil costs was rooted in such fundamental factors as over-estimated supplies and was not solely due to speculation.
There is "a recognition that oil resources are scarcer than was thought a few years ago," the official said. "We agree there is a need for more transparency on the potential supply of various areas."
If scarcity is the chief culprit, the oil price shock may not prove as temporary as hoped, the official said.
_______________
In the G7 and around the world from the Philippines, to Brunei, to Scotland, to New Zealand, to China, to Thailand, to Japan, to Britain, to the US, many nations are either urgently looking at and discussing impending economic collapse, blackouts and food shortages. Others are already experiencing blackouts, brownouts, power cutbacks, or projecting possible lethal power outages this winter. Economic concerns may very soon be pushed aside by issues of simple survival. China's food production has been plummeting for years and overall the entire planet is yielding less and less food which requires ten calories of hydrocarbon energy for every calorie eaten.
The bottom line is that the G7 have admitted that demand has outpaced supply and that due to cooked books and secrecy, they really have no idea how much oil is left, or available for production (two different questions). Within months there will be no more important story on the planet. After that, and as the G7 must begin to offer explanations and answers for all mankind - let alone the soon-to-be anachronistic financial markets - we will be there, dogging every announcement with our research. And we will be demanding honest answers.
In various forms and degrees, panic may ensue.
Almost every nation is now in a scramble for energy. On Septmeber 14, as reported in the Independent, Tullow oil, one of Britain's largest oil companies, warned of blackouts and heating shortages this winter. Why? The North Sea fields are drying up faster than a pair of swim trunks on a hot summer day. A Times of London story the same day warned of power cuts this winter, along with shortages of heating oil. These developments prompted Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to warn the G7 on October 1 that oil prices were a threat to global economic "recovery" (Reuters). Isn't it amazing that the financial guys never talk about survival? They only talk about growth and recovery. That's why economics and the current financial paradigm need to go the way of the Dinosaurs and Saber-toothed tigers almost immediately.
As we have said from the start, and as I conclude in my just-released book Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, we will change nothing at all and we will come, collectively as a species, to a sad and miserable end unless we first change the way money works. That, and nothing less, will make a sizeable difference in the outcome.
Micheal Ruppert
