{"id":36889,"date":"2013-03-15T15:05:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T19:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=36889"},"modified":"2013-03-15T15:05:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T19:05:19","slug":"these-four-major-trends-will-determine-where-oil-prices-go-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/15\/these-four-major-trends-will-determine-where-oil-prices-go-next\/","title":{"rendered":"These Four Major Trends Will Determine Where Oil Prices Go Next"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Justice Litle, <span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.insideinvestingdaily.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.<wbr \/>insideinvestingdaily.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Crude oil remains the most important commodity on the planet. Without<br \/>\nit, economic and political life as we know it would cease to function.<\/p>\n<p>Four <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">BIG trends<\/span> will determine where prices go next:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>China&#8217;s transition to No. 1 oil importer.<\/li>\n<li>The death of Hugo Chavez.<\/li>\n<li>Iran&#8217;s distribution of Chinese-made weapons.<\/li>\n<li>New projections for the U.S. gas boom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>1) China&#8217;s transition to No. 1 oil importer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Says Javier Blas, commodities editor of the <em>Financial Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>China has overtaken the U.S. as the<br \/>\nworld&#8217;s largest net importer of oil, in a generational shift that will<br \/>\nshake up the geopolitics of natural resources. [&#8230;]<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>The U.S. has been the world&#8217;s largest<br \/>\nnet importer of oil since the mid-1970s, shaping Washington&#8217;s foreign<br \/>\npolicy towards energy-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and<br \/>\nVenezuela.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>America is headed in the direction of energy self-sufficiency&#8230;<br \/>\nmaking slow but compounding strides to wean itself off fuel imports.<br \/>\nChina is headed in the opposite direction. It&#8217;s becoming more dependent<br \/>\non foreign oil sources to keep its economy moving.<\/p>\n<p>This sea change favors America. All the talk of <a title=\"The Biggest Bubble in Human History?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billbonnersdiary.com\/articles\/bonner-china-bubble.html\" target=\"_blank\">China<\/a> having the U.S. over a fiscal barrel pales in prospect to the dragon&#8217;s growing energy vulnerability&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>2) The death of &#8220;El Presidente&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With 18% of the world&#8217;s proven oil reserves, Venezuela is the<br \/>\nfourth-largest oil supplier to America. And yet under the reign of &#8220;El<br \/>\nPresidente&#8221; oil production dropped by a fifth. This was due to the<br \/>\nstate-owned oil giant, PDVSA, falling into gross neglect and disrepair,<br \/>\nas Chavez turned it into an arm of the welfare state.<\/p>\n<p>Chavez&#8217;s passing means new opportunity for the Western oil majors to<br \/>\nre-enter Venezuela, renegotiate contracts that Chavez had torn up, and<br \/>\nprovide manpower and expertise to help get Venezuelan oil flowing faster<br \/>\nagain. This is a longer-term geopolitical positive, but with little<br \/>\nimpact on short- to medium-term instability.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>The threat from Iran<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Iran&#8217;s attainment of Chinese-made weapons is raising hackles. Via <em>The<\/em> <em>New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><em>An Iranian dhow seized off the Yemeni coast was carrying<br \/>\nsophisticated Chinese antiaircraft missiles, a development that could<br \/>\nsignal an escalation of Iran&#8217;s support to its Middle Eastern proxies,<br \/>\nalarming other countries in the region and renewing a diplomatic<br \/>\nchallenge to the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Middle East has long been a giant fireball in waiting. It is<br \/>\nbecoming clearer by the day that Iran wants to strike the match&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>America &#8216;s energy revolution<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As <em>The Wall Street Journal <\/em>reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>U.S. natural-gas production will<br \/>\naccelerate over the next three decades, new research indicates,<br \/>\nproviding the strongest evidence yet that the energy boom remaking<br \/>\nAmerica will last for a generation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>The most exhaustive study to date of a<br \/>\nkey natural-gas field in Texas, combined with related research under<br \/>\nway elsewhere, shows that U.S. shale-rock formations will provide a<br \/>\ngrowing source of moderately priced natural gas through 2040, and<br \/>\ndecline only slowly after that&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The impact of the shale gas boom will be profound &#8212; especially as<br \/>\nnatural gas makes inroads as a transportation fuel. Major corporations<br \/>\nsuch as FedEx and Caterpillar are already investing heavily in a switch<br \/>\nto natural gas powered vehicles. Electric cars and hybrids are also<br \/>\nstrong candidates for natural gas consumption, as electric power plants<br \/>\nare increasingly fueled by natural gas.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, there are powerful incentives on every level &#8212; military,<br \/>\npolitical, economic &#8212; for the U.S. to aggressively embrace shale gas.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be recommending ways to play these big trends in future issues of my global trends newsletter <em>Strategic Wealth Report<\/em>. Each one holds the potential for once-in-a-lifetime profits for investors who position themselves wisely.<\/p>\n<p>Carpe Divitiae,<\/p>\n<p>Justice<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"box box1\">\n<div class=\"moduletable\">\n<h3><span class=\"backh\"><span class=\"backh2\"><span class=\"backh3\">Disclaimer<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<div class=\"custom\">\n<p><em>Article brought to you by Inside Investing Daily. Republish<br \/>\nwithout charge. Required: Author attribution, links back to original<br \/>\ncontent or <a title=\"Go To Inside Investing Daily's Homepage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.insideinvestingdaily.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.insideinvestingdaily.com<\/a>. Any investment contains risk. Please see our <a title=\"Read Inside Investing Daily LLC Disclaimers &amp; Disclosure\" href=\"http:\/\/www.insideinvestingdaily.com\/disclaimer.html\" target=\"_blank\">disclaimer<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Justice Litle, www.insideinvestingdaily.com Crude oil remains the most important commodity on the planet. Without it, economic and political life as we know it would cease to function. Four BIG trends will determine where prices go next: China&#8217;s transition to No. 1 oil importer. The death of Hugo Chavez. Iran&#8217;s distribution of Chinese-made weapons. New &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/15\/these-four-major-trends-will-determine-where-oil-prices-go-next\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;These Four Major Trends Will Determine Where Oil Prices Go Next&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}