Scrivener.net

Friday, April 08, 2005


When up is down.

IMF warns on risk of 'permanent oil shock'

The world faces "a permanent oil shock" and will have to adjust to sustained high prices in the next two decades, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday in the starkest official warning yet about the long-term outlook for energy supplies.

Predicting surging demand from emerging countries and limited new supplies from outside the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries after 2010, Raghuram Rajan, IMF chief economist, said: “We should expect to live with high oil prices.”

"Oil prices will continue to present a serious risk to the global economy," he added.

The IMF forecast in its World Economic Outlook that crude would cost $34 a barrel in 2010 in today's money...
[FT]

Or $20 less per barrel than this week's price (and roughly one-third the real price of the early 1980s).