Sea Ice
- About
- Imprint
- Scenarios
- Arctic Marine Transportation by 2030
- Introduction
- Aim of this Study
- Key Factor Classification
- Definitions of Key Factors and Future Projections
- 1. Climate
- 2. Legal framework
- 3. Global Trade Dynamics – Global economic growth
- 4. Safety of other Routes
- 5. Socio-economic impact of global climate change
- 6. Oil Price
- 7. Major Arctic Shipping Disasters
- 8. Windows of Operation
- 9. Maritime Insurance Industry
- 10. Collaboration in resource extraction by China, Japan and Russia
- 11. Transit fees
- 12. Conflict between indigenous and commercial use
- 13. Arctic Enforcers
- 14. Energy sources for propulsion
- 15. New resource discovery
- 16. World Trade Patterns
- 17. Regulation in the Arctic
- Consistency matrix
- Scenarios
- Suggest Wild Cards
- Suggest Key Factors
- References
- Glossary
- Yakutat Community Energy Scenarios
- Introduction to Scenario-Management
- The Consistency and Robustness Analysis
- 1. Key Factors and their Future Projections
- 2. Assigning plausibility values to future projections
- 3. Projection Bundles
- 4. Assigning consistency values
- 5. Obtaining overall consistency values for the projection bundles
- 6. The combinatorial problem of the consistency analysis
- 7. The Robustness of a projection bundle
- Disruptive event analysis – Wild Cards
- ScenLab v1.7 Client download
- Arctic Marine Transportation by 2030
6. Oil Price
AMSA Evaluation: Importance: 7, Uncertainty: 11, Sum: 18
Classification: Economics, Politics, Technology
Over the past 60 years the price of crude oil has been very unstable, ranging between
less than US$ 20.00/bbl (bbl = barrel = 42 U.S. gallons) and US$ 80.00/bbl 145/bbl
with a average world price of US$ 25.56/bbl and a median of US$ 18.43/bbl. The
spikes in oil prices can be closely related to conflicts in the Middle East [Williams].
The past few years have seen a steep increase in prices to a level last seen in the
1970’s. It is unclear if the price will come back to a level observed in the1980’s and 1990’s or will keep rising.
6.1 Unpredictable oscillations
Plausibility: 0.4 0.6
The oil price oscillates unpredictably between US$ 10.00/bbl and US$ 200.00/bbl 300/bbl.
6.2 Predictable steady increase
Plausibility: 0.35 0.2
The oil market stabilizes and due to steadily increasing demand the price per barrel
increases steadily by US$ 5.00 to 15.00 per barrel per yearly average.
6.3 Stable
Plausibility: 0.15 0.1
The price stabilizes at around US$ 75.00/bbl.
6.4 Cheap oil – high competition with other energy sources
Plausibility: 0.1
The price of oil drops rapidly to US$ 10.00 due to shrinking demand and high
competition with other energy sources.
#1 by truffer on October 22, 2008 - 9:58 pm
History shows (particularly recent history) that high fluctuations in oil price are the norm. Half a year ago many pundits claimed that $100 oil is here to stay (and it might be in the longer term). I would raise the plausibility of highly variable prices to at least 0.5
#2 by Marc on December 2, 2008 - 12:02 pm
@truffer
I agree. And I will change the plausibility of 6.1 to 0.6 at the cost of all other plausibilities.
Btw, this is a prime example, why scenarios make sense. A prognosis/forecast of this key factor is merely impossible as the past 18 months have, once again, proven.