'Financiële spelers controleren olieprijs'
De snelle stijging van de olieprijs van zestig naar circa honderd dollar komt niet door vraag en aanbod, maar door de rol van grote investeringsbanken en andere financiële spelers, zegt Wall Street's top-energieanalist Fadel Gheit. "Eenzelfde luchtbel als in huizen en technologieaandelen" dreigt ook hier, waarschuwt hij.
In het Amerikaanse tijdschrift Foreign Policy legt Fadel Gheit aan de hand van zeven vragen uit hoe de zaak volgens hem in elkaar steekt. Anders dan het International Energy Agency in zijn rapporten naar voren brengt, heeft de stijging van de olieprijzen volgen Gheit maar zeer ten dele te maken met de toenemende vraag uit China en India.
Gheit tegenover Foreign Policy:
"Well, that is also true, but does it change the equation so much that we see oil prices up 60 percent in less than six months? Obviously not. I've been in this business for 30 years, and I can tell you, I try to justify $60 oil and I can't find any plausible reason to think that oil prices should be a dollar above $60, let alone above $90 or $100."
FP: So what about derivatives trading.
Gheit:
"That's exactly what I'm focusing on. I truly believe that major investment banks and a large number of very high-risk-taking financial players have seized control of the oil markets, especially in the last six months. During that time, oil prices moved in one direction and market fundamentals really moved sideways or even lowered. Demand has slowed down significantly. We have seen all kinds of indications that we are reaching a breaking point here. We've seen what happened to gasoline margins on the West Coast; they've dropped to an almost 18-year low. All this is an indication that something is wrong with the system, that supply and demand fundamentals do not justify the current price. But if the current price is based on speculation, there is no limit to how high oil prices can go. Basically, as long as there is somebody willing to bid higher, the price of the commodity will move higher."
Gheit vindt dat hier een rol ligt voor de Amerikaanse overheid en dat overheden in staat zouden moeten zijn om schadelijk gedrag te corrigeren.
"The oil markets have been left almost unguarded. And I do believe that the financial institutions, while making billions of dollars in profits, are wrecking global economic growth. The same bubble that happened in housing and tech stocks will come back and haunt us. The U.S. government has an obligation to reign in some of this excessive speculation. Otherwise, there's going to be a very bad ending."