Noticias destacadas - Lunes 5 de mayo de 2008

ENERGÍA

The New Geopolitics of Energy - Michael T. Klare (01/05/2008)

Concern over the safety of vital resource supplies has, therefore, been a central feature of strategic planning for a long time. But the attention now devoted to this issue represents a qualitative shift in US thinking, matched only by the imperial impulses that led to the Spanish-American War a century ago. This time, however, the shift is driven not by an optimistic faith in America’s capacity to dominate the world economy but by a largely pessimistic outlook regarding the future availability of vital resources and the intense competition over them waged by China and other rising economic dynamos. Faced with these dual challenges, Pentagon strategists believe that ensuring US primacy in the global resource struggle must be the top priority of American military policy.

The great risk is that this struggle will someday breach the boundaries of economic and diplomatic competition and enter the military realm. This will not be because any of the states involved make a deliberate decision to provoke a conflict with a competitor–the leaders of all these countries know that the price of violence is far too high to pay for any conceivable return. The problem, instead, is that all are engaging in behaviors that make the outbreak of inadvertent escalation ever more likely. These include, for example, the deployment of growing numbers of American, Russian and Chinese military instructors and advisers in areas of instability where there is every risk that these outsiders will someday be caught up in local conflicts on opposite sides.

Oil is Expensive Because Oil Is Scare - David Strahan, Telegraph (03/05/2008)

The idea that oil companies are somehow ‘to blame’ for record oil prices and rising fuel costs is seductive but absurd. For all their power and profits, the international oil companies are in fact in trouble. They may still be swimming in cash, but no longer in oil. Despite vast investment in exploration and production, these days they generally fail to replace the oil they produce each year with fresh discoveries, or even to maintain current levels of output. Shell’s oil production has been falling for six years, BP’s seems to have peaked 2005, and this week even the mighty Exxon was forced to admit its output dropped 10% in the first quarter of the year.

India Feels The Heat As Thousands Riot Over Power Cuts - Jeremy Page, Times Online (03/05/2008)

Thousands of people, many wearing only underwear, rioted across northern India yesterday over power cuts that have left millions without electricity or water, highlighting the yawning gap between the country’s superpower aspirations and realities on the ground. While India’s economy has grown at an average of 8 per cent for the past four years, enriching a consumer class of 50-60 million people, half of the billion-plus population are not even connected to the electricity network. Those who are rely on voltage stabilisers, inverters (large batteries) and diesel-powered generators. The power minister in Uttar Pradesh predicted that the energy crisis would last for at least two more years.

India’s power plants can produce 132,000 megawatt hours of electricity – less than half the output of the national grid in Britain. The Power Ministry says that demand is at least 14 per cent higher than that – and growing faster than output.

Plateau - Editorial, Houston Chronicle (03/05/2008)

The theory of peak oil holds that at some point — a year from now, a decade — global production of crude will peak, possibly plateau and then inexorably decline. On the eve of the Offshore Technology Conference here, the latest production figures for non-OPEC sources, 60 percent of global supply, indicate output has stalled at about 50 million barrels a day.

The flat production is particularly worrisome, because it comes at a time of record-high prices that ordinarily would stimulate production growth. As that has not occurred, the world’s capacity to produce oil from conventional sources might have been reached.

We’re Nearing Crunch Time For Oil - Jim Kingsdale, Seeking Alfa (04/05/2008)

It’s looking increasingly like Crunch Time for oil will be in effect during the 2010 to 2016 time frame. I’m being optimistic in forecasting an end date for it, but the starting time is, if not etched in stone, predictable with some substantial certainty. If any new reader wants to understand why supplies will diminish sharply around 2010, click on megaprojects, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia, oil demand, and oil supply. You should be up to speed in about half an hour.

Mexican Oil Production Is A Concern For U.S. - Don Briggs, TheAdvertiser.com (04/05/2008)

In a recent televised address, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon warned, “We must act now, because time, and oil, is running out on us.” Analysts estimate at the current rate of consumption Mexico’s oil production could last 9.2 years and exporting will end in less time.

“Unless something is done quickly to allow Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) to operate more as a real oil company, and not as a bureaucratic state-run firm, it will become a marginal exporter in the very short run,” says David shields, a Mexico City-based energy analyst and author of two books on Pemex. This would be a national disaster.

Russian April Oil Output Falls Agaun, Exports Rise - Reuters, Reuters (04/05/2008)

Russian oil production fell for a fourth month in row in April, confirming pessimistic forecasts for the year, when it is expected to fall for the first time in a decade, while exports rose on the back of improved weather. Energy Ministry data released on Sunday showed production stood at 9.72 million barrels per day, down from 9.76 million bpd in March and over 2 percent lower compared to the post-Soviet high of 9.93 million bpd in October last year.

In absolute figures, March production was over 6 million barrels - the size of six large tankers - down from October. Since October, oil production in Russia has been varying between decline and stagnation, prompting many analysts to revise down their oil production forecasts for 2008. A fall in output this year would come after a decade during which production by the world’s second largest oil exporter soared by over a half from the post-Soviet low of 6 million bpd.

North Sea Oil’s Ebbing Tide - Tim Webb, Guardian (04/05/2008)

By 2020, oil and gas production could be one-sixth of today’s level, according to the most pessimistic forecasts - enough to meet only 8 per cent of UK demand. Despite the soaring oil price, companies are drilling fewer exploration wells in the North Sea and investment levels have also started to fall.

Oil was discovered in the North Sea in the late 1960s, with production peaking in 1999 at about 4.5 million barrels per day. The oil fields have yielded 36 billion barrels to date. Since then, production has declined every year. Currently it stands at about 3 million barrels per day and is forecast to decline about 10 per cent by the end of the decade.

The decline has long been forecast. But what no one knows is how steep it will be - nor when the oil will finally run out. The government estimates that there are still between 16.5 and 25.5 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the North Sea. Based on current production levels, that equates to 16 to 25 years of production left. But these figures include oil yet to be discovered, so are unreliable. Using companies’ plans, fewer than 10 billion barrels would be delivered. That would see the North Sea run dry within a decade. It seems the government has finally woken up to the fact that the industry itself will determine how much longer the North Sea lasts. 

 

 

Third Oil Revenues Goes Back To Consumer Countries - KUNA, Power & Materials (04/05/2008)

Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) said Sunday an estimated third of the cash surplus generated from the oil exports of its members in 2007 went back to the consumer countries.

The artificial rise of oil prices and retreat of the U.S. dollar exchange rate against other major currencies raised anew the controversy over use of the dollar as a pricing currency for oil. Some oil exporting countries started reviewing their pricing systems, thus arousing a state of wariness in the global oil markets over the future developments, it went on to say.

The bulletin distinguished between two kinds of the dollar plummeting, firstly; the retreat of the nominal value of the dollar resulting from the soaring inflation rates in the United States in comparison with its trade partners, secondly; the retreat of the real value of the dollar resulting from the discrepancy in inflation rates.

ECONOMÍA

Malas prácticas bancarias - Hans Werner Sinn, Project Syndicate (02/05/2008)

Después de la crisis de la deuda de 1982, la crisis de las sociedades de ahorro y préstamo de finales de los ochenta en Estados Unidos y la crisis financiera de Asia de 1997, la crisis de las hipotecas subprime es la cuarta crisis importante desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial y, por mucho, la mayor. Según el FMI, las pérdidas totales en términos de cancelación de deudas incobrables en los balances será de aproximadamente 1 billón de dólares a nivel mundial, y las instituciones financieras estadounidenses probablemente llevarán la peor parte. Dado que el capital social combinado de todas las instituciones financieras de Estados Unidos es de aproximadamente 1.2 billones de dólares, esta cifra es enorme.

¿Por qué suceden las crisis bancarias? ¿Acaso los banqueros son ignorantes? ¿Por qué aseguran riesgos que llevan a sus bancos al borde de la bancarrota? La respuesta está en una combinación de un sistema de contabilidad malo y varios efectos de riesgo moral que los sistemas normativos existentes no pudieron limitar.

¿El fin de los bancos? - Xavier Vives, Project Syndicate (02/05/2008)

¿Los bancos están condenados al fracaso como resultado de la actual crisis financiera? La securitización de las hipotecas originariamente era vista como un triunfo, porque desviaba el riesgo a los mercados financieros, mientras que tomar depósitos y otorgar y monitorear préstamos –la competencia de los bancos tradicionales- era considerado algo limitado y anticuado. Por el contrario, los bancos modernos buscaban financiamiento principalmente en el mercado interbancario y securitizaban sus carteras de préstamos.

Dollar Reserve Status Is Tale of Fading Glory - Michael R. Sesit, Bloomberg (02/05/2008)

 Reserve currency status is like your health: Abuse it, and you risk losing it. With the dollar’s 45 percent decline against the euro during the past six years and its 37 percent drop on a trade-weighted basis, there is a growing concern that the greenback’s six-decade reign as the world’s most important currency may be ending.

Gold Price Suppression Scheme - The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning (03/05/2008)

I notice that the price ratios between the time spans of differing gold lease rates have been remarkably well behaved lately, almost as if they were locked together in precise bands. I think that this is interesting as hell, although I have no idea what it means, if indeed it means anything, which it probably doesn’t, although I will say that those guys setting up spreads (to take advantage of volatility) in gold have gotten financially killed, which I figure in turn benefited the guys who are short all that gold, as that is who I figure is on the other side of the trade when you and I are trying to make a quick buck with some fancy day-trading of options and futures and, of course, the spreads, and they manage to clean us out pretty regularly, the lying, cheating, thieving bastards.

But being naturally suspicious and cynical, I obviously regard that this is just part of the plan on the part of 1.) The guys who are short gold, whose total short position is in the range of billions and trillions and quadrillions and zillions and gajillions of dollars for all I know, and the 2.) Central banks who foolishly lent out the nation’s gold, at diddly interest rates, as their part of the scheme, and now the Fed has essentially sold (although they call it “leased”) half of all our nation’s gold, which I seem to recall is the estimate of the Gold Anti-Trust Action committee, who are probably best qualified to know (other than the government or Fed, who know for sure, but both of which refuse to even talk about it!).

Lies and Other Statistics - John Mauldin, Save Haven (03/05/2008)

If we are to believe the government statistics, the GDP of the US grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of this year. And unemployment actually fell. And there were only 20,000 job losses. This week we do a quick review of why the statistics can be so misleading. We also look at why I was wrong about the housing number last week, and I highlight what could be a very serious Black Swan lurking in the agricultural bushes. It should make for an interesting letter. It’s hard to know where to begin, there are just so many tempting targets; so let’s take the statistical aberrations in the order they came out this week.

Housing Bust Duration: Update - Calculated Risk (04/05/2008)

This first graph shows real Case-Shiller house prices for Los Angeles and the Composite 20 Index (20 large cities). The indices are adjusted with CPI less Shelter. The most obvious feature is the size of the current housing price bubble compared to the late ’80s housing bubble in Los Angeles.

The Composite 20 bubble looks similar (although larger) to the previous Los Angeles bubble. (Note the Composite 20 index started in 2000). Perhaps we can overlay the current Composite 20 bubble on top of the previous Los Angeles bubble and learn something about the possible duration of the current bust.

In the second graph, the real price peaks are lined up for late ’80s bubble in Los Angeles, and the current Composite 20 bubble. Note that the real price peak for the Composite 20 was flat for several months, so the real peak was chosen as May ‘06. It could also be a few months later.

No Respite From High Inflation For Gulf States - Reuters, Trade Arabia (04/05/2008)

Inflation in Saudi Arabia and four other Gulf oil producers will probably soar to at least 9 percent this year as rents and global commodity prices surge and falling interest rates spur lending, a Reuters poll showed.

In Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, average inflation could hit at least a 30-year peak of 9 percent, on average, compared with 4.1 percent last year, the poll showed. Oman’s average inflation rate will jump to a record 9.3 percent this year, with inflation touching 11 percent on December 31, the poll showed. It also highlighted rapid price growth in Bahrain, the smallest Gulf economy, where inflation should more than double to 8.5 percent by the end of the year and average 6.1 percent. Inflation in Qatar — which froze rents this year to control prices — will still be the region’s highest this year, averaging 13.8 percent, on par with 2007, and easing to 13.3 percent in the fourth quarter. UAE inflation accelerated to an at least 20-year peak of 11.4 percent last year and will rise slightly to 11.8 percent this year, the poll showed.

The Relationship Between The Dollar Depreciation And The Rise In Crude Oil Prices - Walid Khadduri, Dar Al-Hayat (04/05/2008)

The dollar is in a continuous cycle of decline as it lost a quarter of its value against the Euro over the past two years. It has also weakened further with the decisions of the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to support the American economy. These decisions, as it is well-known, have global implications as their effects are not limited to the American economy alone. Many nations and people all over the world have been influenced by the depreciating dollar, not to mention the rise in oil prices.

In its last World Economic Outlook report, the International Monetary Fund reached conclusions similar to those stated by Khalil. The IMF confirmed that in the long term, a 1% decline in the dollar value is equivalent to an increase of over 1% of gold and oil prices. In the short term, the relation is closer to 1%, although higher for gold than for oil. According to the report, moreover, an experts meeting has reached the consensus that the recent surge in oil prices compensates for a weak dollar.

These opposite trends are the result of attempts by investors and speculators to escape the effects of inflation and the declining dollar by resorting to oil and gold. By doing so and pumping billions of dollars out of the stock market, they are effectively weakening these markets while at the same time pushing the prices of oil, gold and commodities upwards at a rate that far exceeds the equilibrium between the demand and supply of these commodities.

Emissions Trading, A Weapon Of Mass Taxation - OnThe Web, CFP (04/05/2008)

The immediate tax revenues collected from the forced sale of the emission permits will just be the start of the ETS tax pain. This tax will feed immediately into the prices for electricity, transport, food, cement and metal products. It will be like spreading the costs of petrol excise taxes into everything we buy. But to administer the whole complicated scheme, with tentacles into every business in the land, will require a stifling bureaucratic overhead of administrators, consultants, regulators, statisticians, tax collectors, auditors, inspectors, enforcers and prosecutors. At a time when real industry is suffering from a shortage of labour and services, all of these people and resources will be sucked into an ETS black hole. This bureaucratic burden is yet another hidden tax.

Then to cope with the vast increase in green/red tape, the business world will build a matching unproductive empire of corporate bureaucrats charged with complying with all the new laws, statistics, reports, taxes, regulations and audits. All these morbid results will be followed by the growth of a parasitic class of traders, speculators and bankers already gearing up to profit from the creation of paper carbon credits – another addition to the hidden ETS tax burden paid for by consumers, taxpayers or shareholders. 

Food, Fuel Costs Climb and Key Inflation Measure Drops - Greg Burn, Chicago Tribune (04/05/2008)

Crunch Time is when global supplies will start diminishing while demand is still trying to grow. It’s when the price of oil will move into the stratosphere as poor countries and poor people are priced out of the market and competition for oil is mainly between the wealthy. As I’ve analogized before, it will be similar to the competition for waterfront real estate in Palm Beach. And you know the price of that.

The Fed, for one, has appeared to struggle with the disconnect, addressing commodity prices frequently in its public statements but still leaving doubt about their influence on monetary policy. At a minimum, it’s clear that traditional measures such as the core personal-consumption expenditure index, which last week showed inflation going down, are being re-evaluated against real-world conditions.

A host of other factors is said to contribute to commodity inflation, from the subsidized diversion of food crops into biofuel to the fortunes flowing into commodity markets, which have become hot speculative investments just like Florida condos and dot-com stocks before them.

Some say the federal government for years has systematically understated inflation, thus missing a gradual but far-reaching shift in the global economy. Inflation may well be tamed in the manufacturing sector, where cheap overseas labor has pushed down the costs of such finished products as computers, apparel, furniture and electronics. But inflation is pronounced in what independent technical analyst Louise Yamada describes as consumer essentials.

El abecedario de la crisis, según el gurú Nouriel Roubini - Fátima Martín, Cotizalia (04/05/2008)

Estados Unidos está atravesando la peor recesión inmobiliaria desde la Gran Depresión, y el declive aún no termina. La construcción de nuevas casas ha caído alrededor del 50%, mientras que las ventas de nuevas viviendas han disminuido más del 60%, lo que ha creado una sobrecarga de la oferta que está provocando una abrupta caída de los precios – 10% hasta ahora y tal vez un 10% adicional este año y en 2009. (…) Ya se ha perdido riqueza por un valor de 2,2 billones de dólares y alrededor de 8 millones de hogares tienen capital negativo: sus casas valen menos que sus hipotecas.

Para 2010, la caída de los precios de las viviendas será de cerca del 30%, se habrá perdido capital inmobiliario por 6,6 billones de dólares y 21 millones de hogares -40% de los 51 millones que tienen una hipoteca- se enfrentarán al capital negativo. Si los propietarios abandonan los hogares, las pérdidas de los créditos podrían ser de un billón de dólares o más, lo que acabaría con la mayor parte del capital del sistema financiero estadounidense y conduciría a una crisis bancaria sistémica.

El consumo privado de los hogares (70% del PIB) es el que está en problemas. Los consumidores estadounidenses han gastado en exceso, no tienen ahorros y están agobiados por las deudas (136% del ingreso en promedio)”. Para rematar, “las pérdidas se están extendiendo de las hipotecas de alto riesgo a las de riesgo moderado y bajo, a las hipotecas comerciales y a los créditos al consumo no garantizados (tarjetas de crédito, préstamos para la compra de automóviles, préstamos a estudiantes). Las pérdidas financieras totales –incluyendo posiblemente un billón de dólares en hipotecas y productos titulizados relacionados con ellas- podrían ser de hasta 1,7 billones de dólares.

Motines del Hambre - Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique (05/05/2008)

Ya son más de treinta y siete los países en los que la inseguridad alimentaria ha provocado protestas. Las primeras tuvieron lugar en México el año pasado por el aumento exagerado del precio del maíz. También en Myanmar (antigua Birmania) la insurrección de los monjes, en septiembre de 2007, comenzó por manifestaciones de descontento contra la carestía de los alimentos. Y en las últimas semanas hemos asistido a tumultos en diversas ciudades de Egipto, Marruecos, Haití, Filipinas, Indonesia, Pakistán, Bangladés, Malasia y sobre todo de África Occidental (Senegal, Costa de Marfil, Camerún y Burkina Faso).

MISCELÁNEA

Boadella denuncia la “perversión” de la igualdad que suponen las autonomías - Libertad Digital (04/05/2008)

El dramaturgo Albert Boadella ha hablado este domingo en Valladolid de su obra “Adiós Cataluña” con duras críticas contra el nacionalismo y el sistema autonómico. De él ha dicho que es un “error” con el que se ha “pervertido la igualdad” y se ha “perdido el sentido de lo que es una nación”. Tras confesarse “aburrido” de la comunidad en la que pasó su vida, ha afirmado que Cataluña ya no “significa nada” para él.