{"id":17493,"date":"2016-02-08T13:12:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17493"},"modified":"2016-02-08T13:12:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:12:47","slug":"why-the-wild-descent-of-oil-is-cause-for-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17493","title":{"rendered":"Why the Wild Descent of Oil Is Cause for Concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the Wild Descent of Oil Is Cause for Concern<\/a><\/h3>\n

Low prices once signalled good news for the global economy. Not this time.<\/p>\n

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\"OilSplat_300px.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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Global markets now behave like digital roller-coasters from China to Europe.\u00a0Oil photo<\/a>\u00a0via Shutterstock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The signs of oil’s madcap price collapse are everywhere.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Global markets now behave like digital roller-coasters from China to Europe.<\/p>\n

Schlumberger, the largest oil field service firm,\u00a0cut<\/a>\u00a010,000 jobs in 2016 and another 20,000 jobs last year. The champion of hydraulic fracturing posted a loss of $1 billion, too.<\/p>\n

Throughout the world’s financial pages, economists have\u00a0adopted<\/a>\u00a0a new noun: stagnation, stagnation and stagnation.<\/p>\n

In Aberdeen, Scotland, former oil workers line up at food banks.<\/p>\n

In Fort McMurray, Canada’s oilsands mining centre, Nexen\u00a0shut down<\/a>\u00a0a 50,000 barrel a day facility — a dramatic first. Dogged by wonky technology and a recent explosion, the Long Lake steam plant consistently failed to reach production targets (70,000 a day). It extracted some of the world’s dirtiest oil.<\/p>\n

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Walmart, a conglomerate founded on the assumption that cheap energy will last forever, is\u00a0closing<\/a>\u00a0more than 200 stores in the United States and Brazil, where the economy has gone south.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In the U.S., scores of energy companies\u00a0dependent<\/a>\u00a0on fracking have gone bankrupt.<\/p>\n

Every continental petro-state — Alaska, Alberta, Colorado, Wyoming, Texas and Louisiana, North Dakota and many others — has now declared extreme budgetary shortfalls due to huge drops in oil and gas revenue.<\/p>\n

The International Energy Agency\u00a0predicts<\/a>\u00a0“the oil market could drown in oversupply” in 2016.<\/p>\n

And so, the descent of oil has become a sort of Sherman’s March on globalization.<\/p>\n

The status-quo pundits say don’t worry. The world is awash in oil due to the brute force of fracking and Alberta’s faltering bitumen boom.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why the Wild Descent of Oil Is Cause for Concern Low prices once signalled good news for the global economy. Not this time. Global markets now behave like digital roller-coasters from China to Europe.\u00a0Oil photo\u00a0via Shutterstock. The signs of oil’s madcap price collapse are everywhere. Global markets now behave like digital roller-coasters from China to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5549,195,331,366,588,1775,595,5499],"class_list":["post-17493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-debt","tag-fracking","tag-global-economy","tag-oil","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-oil-production","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17494,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17493\/revisions\/17494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}