The Real Oil Problem英文书.pdf

ENERGY Behind the myths of an oil crisis and an oil weapon is a very real danger posed by a clumsy and shortsighted cartel. The Real Oil Problem BY M. A. ADELMAN Massachusetts Institute of Technology A ccording to “conventional wisdom,” humanity’s need for oil cannot be met and a gap will soon emerge between demand and supply. That gap will broaden as the economies of Europe, Japan, and several emerging nations grow and increase their energy needs. The United States is at the mercy of Middle Eastern exporters who can use the “oil weapon” to cripple the U.S. economy. Unless we increase domestic oil production radically or cut consumption, or nations like Russia quickly exploit recently discovered oil fields, the United States will find itself in an oil crisis. But conventional wisdom “knows” many things that are not true. There is not, and never has been, an oil crisis or gap. Oil reserves are not dwindling. The Middle East does not have and has never had any “oil weapon.” How fast Russian oil output grows is of minor but real interest. How much goes to the United States or Europe or Japan — or anywhere else, for that matter — is of no interest because it has no effect on prices we pay nor on the security of supply. The real problem we face over oil dates from after 1970: a strong but clumsy monopoly of mostly Middle Eastern exporters cooperating as opec. The biggest exporters have acted in concert to limit supply and thus raise oil’s price — possibly too high even for their own good. The output levels they establish by trial-and-error are very unstable. opec has dam- aged the world economy, not by malice, but because its members cannot help but do so. The group’s power is slowly decreasing, but I do not see it M. A. Adelman is professor of economics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including The Economics of Petroleum Sup- ply: Selected Papers 1962–1993 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993) and The Genie Out of