This morning Paul Krugman came down on the same side of the “Oil Bubble” issue that I did—there ain’t no such animule:
The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding — an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling.
But it hasn’t happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth.
Saying that high-priced oil isn’t a bubble doesn’t mean that oil prices will never decline. I wouldn’t be shocked if a pullback in demand, driven by delayed effects of high prices, sends the price of crude back below $100 for a while. But it does mean that speculators aren’t at the heart of the story.
Or, said another way, there is no big pool of oil.
译文:
根本就没有“石油”泡沫
今天早上，保罗•克鲁格曼（Paul Krugman）在“石油泡沫”这个议题上和我站到了同一战线——这样说并不是没有道理的：
20世纪70年代后期，让投机对油价产生持久影响的唯一方式是看是否会引起对实物的囤积——也就是秘密储藏“黑色黄金”的现象。那个时候，恐慌的人民开始大规模的囤积石油，使伊朗本已遭到破坏的石油供应链大大增加。
但这一次并没有发生这种现象：贯穿整个所谓的泡沫时期，存货总量多多少少都保持在一个正常的水平。这告诉我们这次油价的飞涨并不是大量投机的结果；而是另有原因，究其根本最主要的因素莫过于这几年供求的失衡，总需求大大超过了总供给，勘探发现石油变得越来越困难，而如中国这些国家经济又在飞速的发展。
说这次石油价格飞涨中没有泡沫并不意味着其价格永远不会下跌。如果在高价的滞后效应下，需求开始减少，石油的价格跌至$100一下，我也不会感到震惊。但这个也证明了投机在这次事件中并不是主导因素。
或者，换句话说，世界上已经没有大油田了。