Oil crisis
A oil crisis is a economic Choc caused by a brutal modification of the Offre of Pétrole, combining rise of the Prix and lowers production.
Economic description of the phenomenon
Any sharp variation does not cause necessarily a shock: is needed that this variation obliges the economic agents to take immediate measures, which will have a significant impact on other operators and will force them, in their turn, to make other crucial decisions, which will involve others in their turn of them, etc the inelasticity of the request of short-term oil supports the shocks however.Thus, in the importing countries, a big rise in the price of the Pétrole increases the production costs some Entreprise S, rise which they answer if possible by a fall of consumption, a rise of their selling prices, or lastly by reductions of activity and employment. All that is reflected in all the economy, and in the passing, certain operators find themselves in difficulty, amplifying the problems. In the long term, the economy finds a new state of balance, where the oil consumption is lower.
Contrary, in these countries, a strong fall of the of the same prices width results only in one fall of the cost prices, a rise of the profits, and possibly a rise of the activity and employment. All that is done with general satisfaction and is spread out in time, which does not cause a shock. But the exporting countries undergo, them, a shock ( oil counterblow ) which can be reflected in all financial planet, with negative effects (limited, obviously) even in the importing countries.
Fuels being consumed in a way relatively regular and distributed in the world, and the production of other fossile fuels that oil being concentrated also relatively little, in fact the adjustments with the production of oil are the initial phenomenon.
The economic rule of supply and demand cause a drop in the prices in period of abundance, the fact of going up in the event of restrictions. The political factors (dissatisfaction with the State, political intervention of the Kremlin in the Russian oil businesses, etc) are very important.
The rise of the prices for an energy resource has only one theoretical, remote limit it is true: since one would need more energy to go to seek the resource than this one cannot provide some once extracted, no price, whatever it is, can justify its exploitation more. Oil can, theoretically always, outward journey beyond, because even if it is replaceable by other energy sources, it remains for the moment essential like raw material of the Pétrochimie.
Since the problem of the traveller of Calais , from the prize winner of the Price of the Bank of Sweden in economic scenes in memory of Alfred Nobel Maurice Went, the economists like to calculate the price of renewal of a resource. The only means natural to renew oil consists in heating under pressure and in the presence of water of the organic remains during several millenia. Its synthesis however was carried out during the Second world war by the German scientists. The current price of oil is much lower than its theoretical cost of renewal; the synthetic Essence remains still expensive.
Principal oil crises
- 1979: Second oil crisis because of the Iranian Revolution
See too
Internal bonds
- Chronology of the economic facts
- Economic crisis
- Peak of Geopolitical Hubbert
- Petrodollar
- of oil
External bonds
- Soon one 3rd oil crisis by Yves Cochet, committed article - whereas the two first have causes Politique S, the announced third relates to the Pic of oil and has a cause Géologique.