Abstract
The most important aspect of the energy crisis is that it has never had anything to do with an actual shortage of energy. The known reserves of oil and other fuels are still substantial. The problem is that most of them can be extracted only at costs which are considerably higher than those prevailing in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Notes and References
This is even more true of developing countries where oil ‘provides nearly 65% of commercial energy supplies… Coal is used to a considerable extent only in India and Korea which have indigenous supplies’ (International Energy Agency 1982, p. 154).
‘The period 1960 to 1973 marked a substantial change in the environment facing OPEC… Gradually, there was a shift from a market characterised by oversupply to one characterised by excess demand with virtual disappearance of excess productive capacity outside the OPEC countries’ Griffin and Teece (1982, p. 6).
See, for instance, Bhagwati (1977) and Independent Commission on International Development Issues (1980). (The latter work is much better known as The Brandt Report’.)
Gately (1984, p. 1113).
Quoted in Moran (1982, p. 113).
Ibid., pp. 116–17.
Griffin and Teece (1982, p. 4).
Ibid.
See, for instance, Odell (1981 and 1985). The actual size of the world’s oil reserves is of little economic significance if analysed in isolation. Its importance can be assessed only if it is related to the growth of demand for oil (which depends on the composition and rate of expansion of world output) as well as to the other factors analysed in this chapter. Depending on the assumptions which one makes about each of these factors, the conventional oil reserves could either last well into the next century or disappear within the next few decades. A number of alternative possibilities are examined in Energy Modelling Forum (1982).
Cf. International Energy Agency (1982 and 1986). See also Gately (1984).
Griffin and Teece (1982) contains both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the world’s energy prospects.
International Energy Agency (1986, p. 84).
Amuzegar (1983, p. 93).
Ibid.
Ibid.
See, for instance, International Energy Agency (1986, pp. 105–15).
Ibid., p. 72.
OECD-Interfutures (1979, p. 26).
International Energy Agency (1982, pp. 65–6).
International Energy Agency (1986) provides the most up-to-date estimates of these changes.
Cf. Jenne and Cattell (1983).
International Energy Agency (1986, p. 83).
See, for instance, Moran (1982, p. 113).
International Energy Agency (1986, p. 67).
Gately (1984, p. 1105).
Cf. International Energy Agency (1985 and 1986).
This is why even the ‘optimists’ tend to warn against complacency. Cf. Griffin and Teece (1982, p. 219).
Pindyck (1982, p. 184). See also Pindyck (1981).
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© 1988 Dr Milivoje Panić
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Panić, M. (1988). Origins of the Energy Crisis. In: National Management of the International Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07129-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07129-6_11
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