Comment 51893

By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted November 18, 2010 at 23:02:31

Excellent graphs Ryan, especially 'elasticity of global oil supply'.

I think that the discussion about whether we are in peak oil or not misses the bigger question the first graph suggests: how elastic is the economy in response to rising oil prices? Because of a heavily resource based economy, Canada has little ability to increase GDP/energy unit consumed, since we are in my reading of the data, the most uncompetitive of first world countries in this dimension. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domes...

If Canada's economy is inelastically related to energy prices, that is we are unable to extract more dollars per barrel, what happens?

The test starts now to see if 2008 was a one-off or it will be like 'groundhog day' : as the economy picks up, if oil/gas prices spike up even more quickly, will it trigger the brakes on the economy again? If so, then the sputtering could continue indefinitely if status quo economic management prevails. Soon, maybe within a decade or two, we could be unable to catch up with the rest of the world which can create more GDP per barrel.

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds