Petróleo y crisis

Irak sigue sin volver a los niveles de producción previos a la guerra (y encima ahora parece que se viene la guerra civil); Irán amenaza con cortar el suministro si las Naciones Unidas le aplica sanciones; las compañías petroleras estatales de México y Venezuela, entre otras, no invierten lo suficiente para mantener los niveles actuales de producción; y ahora el problema con el gasoducto desde Alaska.

¿Qué pasa con el precio del crudo?:

BP's unexpected shutdown of its oil production facilities in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay cuts U.S. domestic production by 400,000 barrels per day. That amounts to about 8 percent of domestic production and about 2.6 percent of daily consumption. The oil fields on the North Slope of Alaska produce a total of about 900,000 barrels of oil per day. Skittish world oil markets reacted by running up the price of oil by $2 to almost $78 per barrel (which is still a far cry from the $100 price achieved after the 1979 Iranian revolution).

The BP shutdown comes at a particularly nervous time for oil traders. Iraqi production has never returned to pre-war levels and is threatened by a potential civil war. According to some reports, Nigerian production has been reduced by almost 700,000 barrels per day by attacks from separatist groups in the Niger delta. Iran threatens to withhold its daily exports of 2.5 million barrels of oil if the United Nations imposes sanctions on it in an effort to halt its nuclear program. The state-owned oil companies in Russia, Venezuela and Mexico are under-investing in their production facilities. Meanwhile, global demand for oil continues to grow, if at a somewhat slacker pace than a year ago. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that it would boost its production to make up for the shortfall from Prudhoe Bay.

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