Next industrial renewal is US, forecasts energy trader
Next industrial renewal is US, forecasts energy trader
APRIL 25, 2012 BY
Panel at FT Lausanne commodities conference predicts continuing high oil prices
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The United States is where the world’s next economic and industrial boom may occur, says Daniel Jaeggi, co-founder of Geneva-based energy trading firm Mercuria.
Jaeggi was speaking at a two-day commodities conference in Lausanne 24 April. His privately held firm trades approximately one million barrels of crude oil a day. Jaeggi encouraged investors to look at the US for the start of a new “industrial renaissance” driven by factors including the cheapest energy resources, such as oil, gas and coal, cheap and flexible labour, and a “positive population dynamic, which certainly cannot be said for Europe”.
“We have had the BRIC story since 2001, and by now you would’ve had to have been asleep for the past decade not to know what BRIC stands for”, he told GenevaLunch, referring to rapidly developing economies Brazil, Russia, India and China. “Some tectonic plates are shifting and certain things are changing. The story of the West is that the industrial manufacturing base disappearing from the West has been going on since the 1970s. You can now ask yourself seriously if we are not at the dawn of something very significant.”
Europe’s outlook negative, oil prices to remain high, say traders
A panel of energy trading executives generally agreed on a negative economic forecast for Europe at the Financial Times conference. The panel: Glencore chief of oil Alex Beard, Pierre Barbé, president at Total Oil Trading and Törbjörn Törnqvist, chairman of Gunvor.
Top oil traders handed consumers gloomy news, telling the conference that three-digit prices for oil are here to stay. The price of Brent oil, the benchmark crude, by April had remained above $100 a barrel for a record 200 consecutive days. And oil traders don’t see it slipping, thanks to growing demand and continuing tight supplies.
Ten years ago the price of Brent was $20 a barrel.
The US Department of Energy, in a 2011 report called “What drives the price of crude oil” includes the activities of the financial markets in its seven key factors.
