(1) Crude oil is scarce.
Crude oil is a kind of scarce energy, and there is an absolute shortage. In the long-term consumption process, crude oil will be consumed one day. According to statistics, the current global crude oil inventory is only enough for 60 years. More consumption in that year means less consumption in the future. This kind of consumption of scarce resources at present and giving up the opportunity cost of future consumption is called user cost. Different from ordinary commodities, the composition of oil price includes not only marginal exploitation cost, marginal social cost, but also marginal user cost. The increase or decrease of these three costs leads to the fluctuation of oil prices.
(2) Financial attributes of crude oil
The important influence of speculative trading on oil prices highlights the financial attributes of oil. At present, it is generally believed that the international oil market price is manipulated by two main forces: one is the large international multinational oil companies that control most of the world's oil exploitation resources, and these multinational oil companies often use their abundant capital strength to artificially raise and lower the futures price during the pricing period through the oil futures market; Second, speculative funds have a decisive impact on oil prices. In recent years, international crude oil futures have become more and more financial speculation tools, and speculative funds have an increasing impact on the international oil market.
(3) Strategic attributes
As a strategic commodity, oil is closely intertwined with national strategy, global politics, international relations and national strength. After raising oil to a strategic level, countries take various measures to compete for oil resources through political, economic and military means, gain control over oil prices, and establish large-scale strategic reserves, which in turn further proves the huge strategic attributes of oil.
2 Long-term influencing factors
(1) supply factor
In terms of oil supply, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries plays an important role. Its oil reserves account for 78% of the world's total reserves, its output accounts for 40% of the world's total output, and its exports account for 55% of the world's total trade volume. Therefore, the oil supply of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries plays a decisive role in international oil prices. After 2004, the international oil price continued to rise, mainly due to the shortage of oil supply. Idle capacity of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has declined. According to the statistics of EAI, the output in July 2005 has exceeded 34 million barrels per day. It will be more and more difficult to continue to increase production on the basis of this huge output. By virtue of its unique monopoly position, OPEC countries produce according to the principle of profit maximization, with larger output corresponding to smaller marginal income and smaller output corresponding to larger marginal income, which makes the actual output of a single OPEC country often less than the quota set by the organization. In June+10, 2007, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries made further adjustments to the production agreement. The agreement only stipulates the overall production target, but does not specify the production quota. This change has aggravated the continuous production reduction of OPEC countries, and also caused a huge impact on the international crude oil supply. In 2007, the oil demand increased strongly, and the OPEC cut production to promote the rapid rise of oil prices. Since September, 2008, the three production cuts of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have been carried out under the circumstances that both the demand and the price of oil have fallen, which has played a direct role in the recovery of oil prices.
(2) Demand factors
Since 2004, OECD, Asia-Pacific, European Union, North America and other regions have maintained rapid economic growth rates, and oil demand has grown strongly. As can be seen from the following table, the oil demand growth in Asia-Pacific region is the most prominent, showing a year-on-year growth trend, with an average annual growth of about 24.885 million tons from 2004 to 2009, of which the oil demand in China has an average annual growth of about 22 1.48 million tons, and the growth trends in Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa are similar; In 2005, the oil demand of OECD countries reached 2,282.85 million tons, North America reached165438+39.39 million tons, and the United States reached 9565438+03.7 million tons. The oil demand of EU countries is basically increasing. Although it declined slightly after 2006, the absolute demand is still very large. In the case of less elasticity of demand price, strong demand growth has pushed oil prices up sharply.
Due to the limitation of technical level and investment precipitation, there is a lack of substitution between different energy products in the short term, which is one of the reasons for the small price elasticity of oil demand.
(3) Inventory factors
Petroleum inventory generally consists of commercial inventory and national strategic petroleum reserve. The main purpose of commercial inventory is to ensure the efficient operation of enterprises and prevent the potential shortage of crude oil supply under the seasonal fluctuation of oil demand; The main purpose of the national strategic reserve is to deal with the oil crisis. Oil inventory can reflect the situation of oil supply and demand to a certain extent. The decrease in inventory indicates that oil demand is strong and supply is tight, and vice versa. The adjustment of commercial inventory level of oil companies is mainly based on futures prices. When the futures price is much higher than the spot price, oil companies will increase the commercial inventory of oil and hold the goods to be increased, thus stimulating the spot price to rise and narrowing the price difference between futures and spot. When the futures price is much lower than the spot price, oil companies usually reduce commercial inventory, thus reducing the spot price and the price difference between futures and spot. The influence of oil inventory on oil price is complicated. In the long run, inventory is a buffer between supply and demand and plays a positive role in stabilizing oil prices. When the oil price is low, it will increase the oil inventory and push the oil price up; When the oil price is high, it will sell oil stocks, which will lead to a drop in oil prices.
(4) the dollar exchange rate factor
Oil is denominated in dollars, and the price of oil is closely related to the value of dollars (mainly reflected in the exchange rate). Influenced by the Federal Reserve Committee's continuous reduction of short-term interest rates, interest rate hikes in resource-based countries, and international speculators' reduction of US dollar assets, the US dollar continued to depreciate, resulting in a continuous decline in real oil revenue. In order to make up for the losses, oil-producing countries keep raising oil prices and reducing production. At the same time, the depreciation of the dollar has brought great panic to the international financial industry. In order to avoid risks, speculators have converted US dollars into oil futures contracts, which further affects the balance between supply and demand in the oil market and intensifies oil price fluctuations.
3 reasons for short-term fluctuations
(1) Speculative factors
International oil companies control the international monopoly capital of most of the world's oil resources, and price manipulation is getting worse. At the same time, international speculative capital is also making waves. They have shifted from traditional fields to oil futures. In the context of the fragile balance between supply and demand in the international oil market, speculators make full use of good news and bad news, buy and sell, and profit from it, which intensifies market volatility.
In recent years, the commodity market represented by crude oil and gold has been favored by many institutional investors, and a large number of international hedge funds have intervened in the international oil market. Global hedge funds are an important speculative force in the oil market. In recent years, the sharp fluctuation of international oil price is not only the inevitable result of profound changes in investment background, but also the result of international hedge fund speculation. The fluctuation of oil price trend is closely related to the dynamic change of international capital position.
(2) Emergencies and political factors
In the short term, unexpected events will add fuel to the oil price. The world's major oil producers are located in the Gulf region of Middle East politics.