最新研究生新世纪综合英语unit2资料

Unit2

The New Economics Of Oil

Crude-oil prices have been careening like steel balls in a pinball machine this autumn in response to news and r umors from the middle east.In the first few days of Octobe r,the treat of armed conflict between Iran and Irap sent c rud prices soaring from $20 a barrel to almost $23,before singking back down again.

Even as the world is reminded of the vulnerability of its oil supply, consumption is soaring. Americans have fal len in love with gas guzzlers such as the Ford Expedition. In newly p-rosperous deyeloping couties, ordinary people can afford cars for the first time.A recent survey in the China Youth Daily found that 75%of Beijing families planne d to buy a car in the next five years.

Yikes. Are we in for another oil crisis? You might thi nk so. Fort Worth investor Richard.E.rainwater has 30%of h is $1.5billion net worth sunk in oil and gas investments b ecause he expects to rise 50% to 75%in the next 5 to 10yea rs. With free markets fueling economic growth, says rainwa ter,”we should see a tremendous amount of pressure on pr ices.”

Perhaps,but there is another,quite different scenario---namely,that oil prices, adjusted for inflation, won’t r ise at all over the long term. They may even fall. why? Be cause producers in the Mideast and elsewhere need the cash from oil too much to let their supply be interrupted for long, Despite political and military skirmishing. Second,

and more inportant,because demand groeth can’t push pric es upward as long as it is balanced by supply growth. And the supply curve for oil---the amount offered at any given price---is being pushed steadily outward, thanks to techn ology.

PETRO-TREASURE

Thenological advances are slashing the costs of findin g, producing, and reefing oil,creating a new economic calc ulus for the oil industry.The new alchemy runs from three-dimensional seismology to exotic. Wells that sit on the oc ean floor, in some cases eliminating the need for billion-dollar offshore production platforms/Says shell oil chief Executive Philip J.Carroll:”Thecnology always frives down cost.I don’t think its effect in this industry will be a ny different.”

Never mind the latest discord in the Mideast.Short of destroying another country’s oil wells, as Iraq did to Ku wait in 1991,no nation can curtail the world supply of oil and force up its price for very long.Members of the Organ ization od Petroleum Exporting Countries still sit on the world’s biggest and best oil reservoirs.But they can’t r aise prices---because if they do,non-OPEC sources will gra b market share by developing fields where thecnology has m ade production affordable.

Rainwater’s hight price theory notwithstanding, the e nd of the cold war and the spread of global capitalism are n’t just adding to the demand for oil---they are adding t o its supply as well.That’s because more and more countri es, from Venazuala to Kazakhatan,are welcoming the investm ent that’s needed to exploit their petro-treasures.

The progress already achieved through thechnology is mind-boggling. The average cost per barrel of finding prod ucing oil has droped about 60% higher than in 1985.And the se official figures far understate the amount of accessibl