October 22, 2014
Joe Nocera is anxious to credit shale oil with the recent plunge in oil prices, but our old friend Mr. Arithmetic sees things differently. In his column pronouncing the end of OPEC, Nocera credits the “shale revolution” in North America, which he credits with an additional 3 million barrels a day of production.
While this undoubtedly has put downward pressure on prices, it is not the major cause of price declines as can be easily seen from looking at the projections from before the economic collapse in 2008. The 2007 World Energy Outlook projected output in 2015 of 98.5 million barrels per day (Table 1.3). The most recent projections put production at 92.7 million barrels per day, 5.8 million fewer than had been projected before the slump. This means production has actually grown less rapidly than projected. That is not a good explanation for declining prices.
Obviously the key is on the demand side. The story here is primarily that the collapse has led to less demand for energy than had been projected as world GDP is still far below the levels projected in 2007. It is likely that conservation and the switch to alternative energy sources also played a role in reducing the demand for oil, but clearly a less important one.
The point is that crowning fracking as the killer of OPEC doesn’t make sense, because the numbers don’t support it. And, we still don’t have basic questions answered about the damage of fracking to the surrounding environment. (The frackers won’t reveal the chemicals they use because they claim they are a trade secret. This makes it almost impossible to prove that fracking is responsible for contaminating ground water. The permission to pollute the area surrounding frack sites with impunity is yet another great departure from free market economics when it suits the interests of the rich and powerful.)
The plunge in oil prices is also not especially good news for folks who would rather not see the planet destroyed by global warming. A sane approach would be to impose a tax to offset the drop in prices with the revenue used to promote conservation and clean energy. But that one isn’t likely to be on the political agenda any time soon.
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