The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

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My old company looked at this issue, oil and gas price predictability, a long time ago for the NPC. We concluded that the only thing predictable was volatility. IE the sharper the rise, the further the subsequent fall and vice versa. There are fundamental limits to the fall or rise of course - the marginal cost of over or under production. As for geopolitical risk in Barron's article, who knows. The ME has pretty much blown up and it hasn't impacted supply. A decade ago, I thought west Africa is the tinder box and IMO that risk has receded. Venezuela has a lot of excess capacity if their politics revert away from communism. Now there are non ICE options and the cost of non ICE options come down 7%/yr.