高油价将永远改变世界
INDUSTRY WITNESSES A 'STRUCTURAL SHIFT'
作者：英国《金融时报》埃德•布鲁克斯(Ed Crooks)
2008年7月2日 星期三
对于当前震撼全球能源行业的剧变，俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司(Gazprom)首席执行官阿列克谢•米勒(Alexey Miller)做了一番生动描述。
他最近对英国《金融时报》表示：“我们生活在油气价格飙升的时代：市场正在发生结构性变革，最终，价格将达到一个全新的水平。”
“人们正在为了获得能源资源而展开激烈的竞争。油价的攀升与远景预期的重大调整有关。它们表明，在未来几十年，全球能源供需局面将处于不平衡状态。”
“明年油价可能达到每桶250美元”
他表示，他之所以预计油价明年可能达到每桶250美元，正是基于这种看法。
当然，他是站在自己的立场说这番话的：坐拥全球最大的化石燃料储量资源之一，俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司自然希望油气价格能涨多高就涨多高。
不过，在消费层面，很多人对能源前景也抱有这样的预期。
国际能源机构(IEA)首席经济学家法提赫•比罗尔(Fatih Birol)最近在《外交政策》(Foreign Policy)杂志撰文警告称：“我预计，在未来几年，我们将得到一个高（油）价曲线。这条曲线可能会有转折起伏，但就长期而言，如果油价跌至三、四年前的水平，我会感到非常吃惊。”国际能源机构代表着富裕的石油消费国。
随着油价远远超出甚至6个月前看似可能的水平，寻找解释的努力已经变得越来越令人绝望。
许多所谓的理由都有严重缺陷。
资源枯竭论
有些人相信，我们已经到达“石油峰顶”：在这一点上，世界石油产量无法再有提高，并且开始下降。
这一命题只能事后验证，但其强烈的假设意味没有得到广泛支持——这种假设认为，石油产量之所以见顶，是因为我们已经达到可用资源的地质局限。
这种说法无法解释为何天然气和煤炭价格也在竞相飙升——相对于石油，天然气的供给要丰富得多，而煤炭的供给更是远高于油气。
投机者哄抬价格论
另外一些人把责任归咎于“投机者”。石油输出国组织（OPEC，简称：欧佩克）长期以来一直在宣扬这一观点，而美国和欧洲的政界也越来越认同这一说法。
这一主张有一些最天真的说法，很容易驳倒。投机批判人士提到期货市场不断增长的交易量，但却忘了一点：任何一份石油远期买单必然对应着一份远期卖单。
更成熟一些的说法也经不起推敲。近些年，金融投资者积累了越来越多的原油多头头寸，但从各种已有数据判断，这些“投机者”的买入行为与油价飙升的时机并不吻合。
在石油之外，其它市场提供了强有力的证据，否定了“强大投机者”理论。
按照Henry Hub合约计算，美国国内的天然气价格在过去一年中大幅上涨，但在这段时间，金融投资者在期货市场上可是扎扎实实的净卖出者。
与此同时，有些大宗商品根本没有金融投资者参与，例如大米，但其价格也一直在大幅上涨。
如果是投机行为人为导致价格上涨，那么，实际原油库存应该出现增长，因为在投机驱动的高价之下，现货市场无法出清。
但这种情况并没有发生——除了一些特例，例如最近几周已经装船、正在寻找买家的伊朗高硫原油。
那么，如果油价上涨的原因既非资源耗竭，也非金融操纵，那又是什么呢？
大宗商品普遍涨价
最有说服力的证据是，价格上涨的有很多不同种类大宗商品——不仅有能源，还有金属和粮食。
所有这些市场存在的一个共同因素是：亚洲经济体的崛起、生活水平的提高和经济的发展，导致全球需求出现结构性变革。正如米勒所言：“过去10年（1997年至2007年），中国的能源消费几乎翻番，而印度能源消费增长了1.5倍。”
“在亚洲，摩托车已经取代了自行车。如果换成汽车，情况又将如何？”
不断增长的需求已经达到一定程度，给本已在疲于维持供应的各个行业带来了巨大压力。
需要时间种地产粮的农业是这样。工程项目生命周期长达几十年、设计投产动辄需要10年时间的能源行业更是如此。
过去20年中的投资不力，是下列问题背后的一个共因：发电能力和电网不足；风力发电机供不应求；全球煤炭运输能力受到制约；石油精炼厂缺乏；很多富油国家产量不足。
现在，正当所有能源价格都发出了急需投资的信号之时，资本支出的增长却遇到了熟练员工、物资和供应链容量方面的瓶颈。
结果是成本飙升，投资没有产生预期的结果。
此外，就石油和天然气而言，还有一些政治问题阻碍了在一些资源丰富国家的投资，例如伊朗、伊拉克、委内瑞拉和尼日利亚。
高涨的价格还让一些资源丰富的发展中国家产生了一种扭曲的想法：要把自己的油气资源留在地下。
如果他们收到的资金达到期望上限，或者从他们的经济着眼是他们能够处理的上限，而且如果他们认为留着资源不开发会为自己的后代保留价值，就会诱惑这些国家在面对高价格时非但不增加供给，反而会抑制供给。
在发达国家也有一个问题。那里的资源都是由商业企业开发的，它们不会有考虑后代的朦胧想法，而会追求利润最大化，因此，会对价格信号做出反应。
在很多此类国家，资源已达到物理极限，正在枯竭。
例如，北海的产量正在急剧下降。英国石油(BP)最近特别指出，挪威是去年石油产量降幅最大的国家之一。
能源周期终将转向
如果像看起来一样，能源价格高涨的原因与产能限制和政治因素有关，那么能源周期就会再次转向，一如以往的所有周期。
价格最初可能还会大幅上涨，但最终，供给层面将作出反应——越来越多地来自一些“非传统”资源，如油砂和巴西乙醇等生物燃料。
正如多数发达国家已经开始的那样，需求也将受到抑制。
不过，经济实力从欧洲、日本和美国转向新兴亚洲的趋势似乎不会逆转，而世界能源资源的流动将追随经济实力。
虽然21世纪的这场能源危机终将消退——就像70年代的能源危机那样，但它留下的世界格局将相当不同。
译者/苏客
阅读本文章英文,请点击 INDUSTRY WITNESSES A 'STRUCTURAL SHIFT'
INDUSTRY WITNESSES A 'STRUCTURAL SHIFT'
By Ed Crooks
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Alexey Miller, the chief executive of Gazprom, has given a vivid description of the upheavals shaking the global energy business.
"We are living in the time of a great surge in oil and gas prices: a structural shift in the market, which will end with prices at a radically new level," he told the Financial Times recently.
"Fierce competition is unveiling for access to energy resources. Oil price rises are linked to a major revision of long-term forecasts. They demonstrate global energy supply demand imbalance in the coming decades."
It was that vision, he said, that explained his prediction that the price of oil could next year reach 0 a barrel.
He was talking his own book, of course: as the owner of one of the world's biggest fossil fuel reserves, Gazprom wants oil and gas prices to be as high as possible.
But it is a version of the energy outlook that is shared by many on the consumers' side of the fence.
Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, which represents rich oil-consuming countries, warned in recent comments to Foreign Policy magazine: "I expect that for the next few years, we will have a high [oil] price trajectory. There may be zig-zags, but I would be very surprised if prices go down to the levels we saw three or four years ago, in the long term."
As the price of oil has soared far beyond what seemed likely even six months ago, the search for explanations has become increasingly desperate.
Many of the purported reasons for its spectacular ascent are deeply flawed.
Some believe that "peak oil" - the point at which the world's oil production can no longer be increased, and begins to fall - has been reached.
It is a proposition that can only be tested in hindsight, but the strong form of the hypothesis - which suggests that oil production is peaking because the geological limits of available resources are being reached - does not command general support.
It fails to explain why prices of natural gas, which is in more plentiful supply than oil, and coal, which is in much more plentiful supply than either, have also been racing higher.
Others blame "speculators", a view that has been long propounded by Opec, the oil producers' group, and has been gaining increasing political traction in the US and Europe.
The most na?ve forms of the argument are easily dismissed. Critics of speculators point to the increasing volume of trading in the futures market, missing the point that every forward purchase of oil must also be a forward sale.
More sophisticated versions do not fare much better. Financial investors have built up growing long positions in crude oil in recent years, but the fit between buying by those "speculators" and jumps in the oil price rise is poor, as far as one can tell from available data.
Markets other than oil provide telling evidence against the theory of powerful speculators.
US domestic gas prices, as measured by the Henry Hub contract, have risen steeply in the past year. But financial investors have been substantial net sellers in the futures market over that period.
Meanwhile prices of commodities in which there is essentially no activity by financial investors, such as rice, have also been rising sharply.
If speculation were forcing prices artificially higher, there would be mounting stocks of real crude oil, as the physical market failed to clear at the inflated speculator-driven price.
With some exceptions, such as the stock of Iranian high-sulphur crude that has been waiting on tankers trying to find a buyer in recent weeks, that has not been happening.
So if neither exhaustion of resources nor financial manipulation is the reason, what is?
The most telling piece of evidence is the number of different commodity prices - not just energy, but metals and foodstuffs as well - that have risen.
The common factor in all of these markets is the rise of the economies of Asia, the improvement in living standards and development of economies that have created a structural shift in global demand. As Mr Miller put it: "The past 10 years [1997-2007] saw China's energy consumption almost double and India's grow over 1.5-fold.
"Asia has replaced bikes with scooters. What about the next step to cars?"
Rising demand has reached the point where it is putting enormous strain on the industries struggling to sustain supply.
That is true in agriculture, where it takes time to bring land into production. It is even more true in energy, where projects have lives measured in decades, and can easily take 10 years from first concept to the start of production.
Lack of investment during the past two decades is the common factor behind: shortages of power generation capacity and network connections; long waiting lists to buy wind turbines; constraints in shipping coal around the world; the lack of refineries to turn crude into diesel; the shortfalls in production in many oil-rich countries.
Now that the price of all forms of energy is signalling that there is an urgent need for investment, a surge in capital spending is trying to squeeze through a narrow aperture in terms of skilled staff, materials and capacity in the supply chain.
The result is that costs are soaring and the investment is not delivering the results that had been hoped for.
In addition, in the case of oil and gas specifically, there are political problems that are impeding investment in many of the best-endowed countries, such as Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria.
There is also a perverse incentive created by high prices for some resource-rich developing countries to keep their oil and gas in the ground.
If the cash they are receiving is as much as they want or can handle for the good of their economies, and they have a sense that leaving their resources undeveloped will preserve their value for future generations, there will be a temptation for those countries to respond to high prices by restricting rather than expanding supply.
There is also an issue in advanced economies, where resources are being developed by commercial companies that have no vague thoughts for future generations but want to maximise profits, and will respond to price signals.
In many of these countries, resources have reached their phyisical limits and are running out.
The North Sea, for example, is in steep decline. BP, the British oil major, recently highlighted Norway as one of the countries that suffered the steepest declines in oil production last year.
If the reasons for high prices are to do with capacity constraints and political factors, as they seem to be, then the energy cycle will turn again as it always has.
Prices may go a lot higher first, but eventually supply will respond - increasingly from such "unconventional" sources as oil sands and some biofuels, such as Brazilian ethanol.
Demand, too will be curbed, as it has already begun to be in most developed economies.
But the shift of economic power away from Europe, Japan and the US towards emerging Asia does not look likely to be reversed, and the flow of the world's energy resources will follow that economic power.
While the energy crisis of the 2000s will recede, as the crisis of the 1970s did, the landscape left behind will be very different.经济观察,高油价将永远改变世界
