Hátt olíuverð - hin hliðin - Peningalykt

Nú þegar við flest bölvum hærra olíu og bensínverði, eru örg yfir vaxandi fjárútlátum, er ef til vill ekki úr vegi að velta því fyrir sér hvert allir þessir peningar fara.  Vissulega fær hið opinbera víðast um lönd meira í sinn vasa í formi skatta (sölu eða virðisauka), olíufélögin hagnast yfirleitt líka á hækkununum, smásalinn (ef um sjálfstæðan aðila er að ræða) fær nokk það sama fyrir sinn snúð, en það verður ekki fram hjá því litið að "olíuframleiðsluríkin" eru að gera það gott. 

En hvað gera þau við alla þessa peninga? Gamlar staðalímyndir eru auðvitað menn í hvítum "kuflum" akandi um á Rolls, fljúgandi um í einkaþotum, byggjandi hallir og spreðandi peningum í allar áttir.

Það var því ánægjulegt að lesa grein á vef Times, um hvernig "olíuframleiðsluríkin" eru flest hver að nota þetta aukna fjárstreymi til uppbyggingar og skynsamlegra fjárfestinga.

Þar segir meðal annars:

"But still, if Arab oil countries are to shake off their abysmal rate of development, and find occupation for their restless, unemployed young people, then it lies in changes such as these.

The IIF, a Washington-based outfit that supplies analysis to banks around the world, set itself to answer a pressing financial puzzle: what have oil countries done with their money in the five years since the oil price has trebled?

“More than they did during the 1970s oil price surge,” is the encouraging answer. The headline figures alone spell out the size of the challenge for those countries. The IIF estimates that export earnings for the six of the Gulf Co-operation Council (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain) will top $500 billion this year. About 80 per cent of that will come from oil and gas — a threefold increase in four years.

For the GCC as a whole, gross domestic product per head has risen over the past three years from $11,000 to $17,000. This reverses years of slipping income per head, as population numbers soared, but economies stagnated. But the question now is whether the governments use the windfall wisely. Part has been poured into an investment boom, with projects costing more $1 trillion under way, both to improve the oil and gas sector and general infrastructure. “Many of the projects will be viable, in contrast to earlier booms,” the IIF concludes.

But in most of the countries, there is little scope for stepping up oil and gas production in the near future. Most of their growth in 2006 and 2007 is expected to come from the other parts of their economies, the IIF finds."

"But it does suggest that new commercial opportunities are providing more jobs. “Job creation is a priority throughout the region”, it notes, with labour forces growing at about 4 per cent a year. In UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, unemployment is below 5 per cent, but in the others, it is between 15 and 20 per cent.

The surge of young people coming to adulthood, without much prospect of work, creates social strains. Saudi Arabia is particularly aware that these conditions foment radical opposition."

Þessa grein má finna hér.

Eitt af þeim ríkjum sem hafa hagnast verulega á hækkuðu oliuverði er svo Kanada, sérstaklega Alberta fylki.  Þar hefur vaxandi nýting "olíusandsins" gjörbreytt efnahagnum, eins og ég hef bloggað um áður.  En nýlega var ágætis grein um "olíusandana" á vef Spiegel.

Þar má m.a. lesa:

"It may not be the cheap, easily extracted stuff found in Saudi Arabia -- but geologists claim that the Canadian province of Alberta could well match the Middle Eastern oil exporter as far as quantity is concerned. Experts believe the accessible oil reserves here could total as much as a whopping 174.5 billion barrels -- a volume greater than supplies in Iran and Libya combined. If the calculation is accurate, then Canada is number two in the global ranking for oil reserves.

The dreams currently associated with Fort McMurray were triggered by massive oil sands -- a thick, sticky mass that looks like waste oil dumped in a sandpit. During the brief Canadian summer, the oil has the consistency of syrup. In the winter it's hard as concrete. The oil fields are the size of Greece."

"There are political reasons for the run on the oil sands too. The Canadian government is fond of reminding people that this oil is located on the territory of one of the stablest democracies in the world and is not in the hands of petrocrats like Tehran, Caracas or Moscow. The greasy mélange from Fort McMurray will "change the geopolitical situation," the Ministry of Finance in Ottawa proclaims proudly. The United States -- the world's main consumer of petroleum -- is, of course, also fascinated by the idea of having a friendly oil provider right next door.

What money smells like

The US Senate has already sent a group of delegates to the area where the oil sands are located, and the US Treasury Secretary has also stopped by. The plan is for the oil sands to comprise of one-fourth of North America's petroleum production by 2015. "We will depend on our friends for energy security, not necessarily dictators and sheiks and rats from around the world," cheered Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer following a recent visit to Fort McMurray.

If there is still any need to prove the hypothesis that the era of easily extracted oil is nearing its end, then that evidence can be found in Fort McMurray. Huge excavators with a capacity of 100 tons scrape the tar sediment from the ground and deposit it onto giant trucks. When they rumble off to one of the processing facilities, the trucks weigh as much as a jumbo jet.

There the oil sands are heated with hot water and natron brine until foamy bitumen forms on their surface and can be removed. The amount of chemicals required is so massive that Fort McMurray is often plagued by the biting stench of cat's urine. The oil companies dismiss the inevitable complaints by pointing out that "that's what money smells like.""

Það er sem sé víðar en á Íslandi þar sem "peningalykt" er þekkt fyrirbæri, en greinina í heild má finna hér.