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 Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.
In a previous article called “China’s Great Depression”, I postulated that China must necessarily fall into a depression, probably comparable to the American one from the 1930s, which in turn will spread to become a worldwide depression. In response, many readers asked whether in such a depressionary environment the price of oil would go up or down. The straightforward answer is that in an inflationary bust, the price of oil will go up, and in a deflationary bust—down. Of course, the response is evasive, provides no analysis, and answers an ill-defined question. Therefore, the goal of this article is to explain the importance of the question, to define its scope properly, to answer it with sound economic analysis, and to summarize our results.
Over the next decade, oil fundamentals may be characterized as 10+. Oil supply is at or near its “Hubbard’s” peak, and oil is currently pumped at close to 100% capacity. Therefore, growth of oil supply is rapidly slowing down and is expected to decrease in the coming years. On the other hand, China’s and India’s industrialization will continue to drive oil demand at growth rates higher than the growth rates of oil supply, and as a consequence, the price oil has to go much higher in order to ration the relative scarcity of oil supply. In this environment of strong fundamentals for oil, a booming worldwide economy will guarantee much higher oil prices; however, in a worldwide recession, the issue becomes whether the strong oil fundamentals will nonetheless outweigh a slowdown in oil demand. Precisely this issue motivates our present analysis.
The proper definition of the problem requires investigation of the price of oil (1) relative to the U.S. dollar, (2) relative to strong fiat currencies, (3) relative to gold and silver, and (4) relative to a basket of commodities. Below, we investigate each in turn, although I would like to respectfully acknowledge Marc Faber’s seminal contribution in (1) and (2).
Rest of the article.
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