The Blame Game

Context: Rising Oil prices. Recently held Oil Summit in Jeddah.

Characters:

1. Western, rich countries = USA represented by Samuel Bodman, US Secretary of Energy.
2. Developing countries = China- no representation, India by P.Chidambaram, Finance minister; Murli Deora, Minister of Petroleum and natural gas.
3. Oil producing countries = Saudi Arabia by Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi.

Lets start the game. Well, if USA is present in any game (be it oil game, war on terrorism game or nuclear bombing game), it will go first. No questions asked.

Mr. Bodman said:

Market fundamentals (of supply and demand) show us that production has not kept pace with growing demand for oil, resulting in increasing -- and volatile -- prices. Every 1 percent increase in the demand for oil requires a 20 percent rise in price to balance the market. Demand in China, India and the Middle East has been soaring in recent years as the countries consume more energy to fuel economic growth.

In essence, he is blaming the increasing demand by the developing countries (which is obvious) and also the Saudis for not increasing the production. But he never raised the issue of curbing the consumption by US (indeed, they are the largest consumers!!).

Ali al-Naimi expressed his concern that oil prices are being driven by financial factors like speculators and not by supply and demand.

Speculators are a tribe who intelligently (i doubt that) predicts the future of oil prices by looking at obscure data all day long (and makes nothing less than 100 grand!). So basically this tribe reacts to the reaction of reactions of (read chain reaction) ..oil ministers, industry leaders, politicians and they use their much debated analysis and brilliance to raise the prices.

P Chidambaram blames futures trading and unregulated oil markets and he denied increase in demand has anything to do with the situation. Well I can't explain what this Harvard Business School alumni is saying (Ever wonder why there is an absence of commotion in the Assembly while this guy is talking!!...Its damn hard to get it.)

So as we can see there is lot of blaming on others rather than a consensus about the real issues.