Resource Insights: The high cost of low-priced oil.
As a consumer of oil, you may regard recent sharp declines in the world oil price as a blessing. But…
If you work in the oil industry, you will not.
If you work in the renewable energy industry, you will not.
If you work in the energy efficiency business, you will not.
If you work to address climate change, you will not.
If you have investments in the oil industry (and nearly everyone does through pensions or 401k plans), you will not.
If you live in a country that exports a lot of oil (not just Saudi Arabia, but Mexico, Canada and Norway, too), you will not.
The declining price of oil is supposed to have a balanced ledger of winners and losers. But we may be on our way to finding out that in the long run we will have a much larger list of losers than winners.
And, the list will lengthen if the price continues to fall, and especially if it stays down for a long time. (Low prices are not necessarily an indication of future abundance. Remember that oil reached $35 a barrel at the end of 2008 before returning to record average daily prices in 2011, 2012 and 2013.)
