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With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

economist.com

161–170 of 202 posts

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I not hear that some of those high numbers either have to do with corruption or over-reliance of public services on socialized oil industry profits? Last time this came up someone was trying to make the argument that the reason some countries need 50% higher oil prices has less to do with the costs of extracting and shipping the oil and more to do with the cost of doing business in that country. If so, you may se…

I highly doubt reform will be high on the list of priorities for a corrupt regime in decline. I would expect that the poor and middle class would suffer far more and first.

I did not mean to imply that the pressure would necessarily be orderly or civil.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once word gets around they'll start teaming up. They were able to do this fairly successfully until shale oil and spoiled their intermittently successful collusion.

They were only able to do it because Saudi Arriba was willing to take almost all of the cuts required. In the 1970s opec vot better compliance, but cartels tend to fail because it is the benifit of the individual to defect while everyone else makes cuts. Saudi Arriba is not able to make deep enough cuts alone though, and it is hard to see anyone else making them.

I've always wondered how much black market petroleum is state sanctioned. Unofficially, of course.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#163
post #120

I mean, this happened just a few years ago back in 2015, right? And 2008, and 2001, and 1998... These petro states suffer from the curse of natural resources combined with leadership that is too busy feasting off of the intermittent boom cycle to prepare their people constructively for the bust that comes later. So you have entire countries that are basically dependent on the oil handout, and in bad times, have littl…

That is a very valid point, however, how long before the US can't get away with simply printing money during financial crises ? :)

Longer than those of us who oppose printing money would like. The US economy has many different parts that stand well on the world stage and so it can get away with things.

Agriculture in the US is something that the middle east cannot duplicate. They could duplicate some other industry, though some of it has historical roots that will be hard to overcome starting from scratch.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biomass is over 40% of Europe's "renewable" energy. Edit: see this for numbers: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/4/18216045/ren...

So, yes, "you're pretty special and living in an unusual place"

It's over 10% of renewables in the US. So not that unusual.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#165
post #136
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway used to be a relatively poor country by Western European standards but had a functional economy before oil. Homogeneity, a staunchly hard-working and independent population, being surrounded by lutheran economies, and "bondevett", is why Norway turned out well.

That's not really true, Norway was one of the richest countries in the world long before the oil boom. In Europe it was only behind Luxembourg, Switzerland and Sweden by GDP per capita in 1960.

You're right. I've lived in Norway and was repeatedly told by Norwegians the country used to be poor, something I believed (there isn't much in Norway that reminds of a wealthy past). Apparently it's just a myth [1][2].

[1] https://www.dnva.no/detskjer/2019/11/en-feiloppfatning-norge...

[2] https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/LM1L1/Hvorfor-...

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say in the oil industry: the cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. In any case, if the developing world is really to develop as much as hoped for and claimed they will need a lot of oil. Even if it is all renewables based (which is a fantasy) those renewables require large oil inputs to be manufactured (those 400 ton mining trucks won't be electrified anytime soon). So while I expect oil to be down over…

The heavy trucks used in the mining industry are almost entirely electric. If a truck is going underground, much better for it to not be spitting fumes that will kill your workers, and if the mine is at the top of a hill, the regenerative braking from a loaded truck going downhill will charge the batteries so much that the trucks rarely, if ever, have to be manually charged. Some of the trucks in question: https://ww…

Those have diesel engines. You don't know what you're talking about. The electric drive is to make power transmission easier, and yes, to allow for regenerative breaking.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heavy trucks used in the mining industry are almost entirely electric. If a truck is going underground, much better for it to not be spitting fumes that will kill your workers, and if the mine is at the top of a hill, the regenerative braking from a loaded truck going downhill will charge the batteries so much that the trucks rarely, if ever, have to be manually charged. Some of the trucks in question: https://ww…

Thanks for the comment. I took the previous poster's comment at face value (seemed like common sense). My internal db has been updated.

The comment is wrong. Those trucks have diesel engines. It's even on the page they posted. The electric drive is for power transmission/traction control.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#168

Worth appreciating the economic dynamic the article is based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse Basic issue is that when a government can fund itself using resource extraction, it does not need the consent of a nation of people who would otherwise make up a tax base, so they pay the army and police out of oil money to keep them in power, and the average citizen is reduced to a subject. Trouble is, if al…

It is a lot easier to win the hearts of the people when you don't have to tax them to give them whatever will interest them.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say in the oil industry: the cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. In any case, if the developing world is really to develop as much as hoped for and claimed they will need a lot of oil. Even if it is all renewables based (which is a fantasy) those renewables require large oil inputs to be manufactured (those 400 ton mining trucks won't be electrified anytime soon). So while I expect oil to be down over…

Mining trucks and industrial infrastructure don't really reflect the bulk of petroleum use. Something like 2/3 of the total US petroleum input goes to simple civil transportation alone. Heavy industry and core infrastructure are the last things that people interested in renewables will be fighting over. The low hanging fruit of personal vehicles and electricity generation is what's killing the middle east oil cartel.

Sure, my point is just that the developing world is going to use a lot of petroleum in order to develop. Mining was just an example of where it's used. No one commenting has refuted that, and the people talking about electric mining trucks don't know what they are talking about and have probably never been to a mine before.

Re: With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books

#170

Incidentally, this situation ended up being the nail in the coffin for the Soviet Union. The Soviets had been forced to import a lot of grain in the eighties and they were paying for it with oil exports, since that was really the only export that the west was interested in buying from the Soviets. When oil crashed in the mid eighties, the Soviets were forced to look for hard currency loans from the west to keep up fo…

Who was making the loans to the Soviets specifically? For all the hard rhetoric of the 80s, it's quite interesting that the West was willing to prop up a ( Communist!!! ) entity for a fee.

This is a good summary:

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a254728.pdf

"In retrospect, it is possible to see that bank confidence had begun to erode as early as the latter part of 1988. In the fall of that year, new patterns of bank lending to the Soviet Union appeared. Previously, it was typical for banks from many nations to participate in syndications for loans to the Soviet Union. Beginning in October 1988, though, a number of very large loans were negotiated with purely national syndications-that is, all participating banks were from a single Western country. Western governments played important roles in arranging these syndications, and usually the loans were to finance exports from the lending country. At the time, a number of Western governments were intent on providing material support for the processes of economic and political reform perceived to be under way in the Soviet Union. By intervening with banks on behalf of the Soviet Union-either directly through loan guarantees or through less formal encouragement of bank lending-these governments probably helped the Soviet Union to achieve better terms from the banks than it could have gotten on its own. By mid-1990, bank confidence had declined sufficiently that banks would lend to the Soviet Union only with explicit guarantees from Western governments."

To answer your question though, I believe it was primarily Western European countries providing or guaranteeing the funds by 1989.

At the time, Gorbachev was seen as a reformer, and the West was willing to grant him some rope in the form of hard currency loans, but that would have evaporated if he had pulled a Prague in Warsaw or East Berlin.

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