Does Oil Price Shocks Affect Business Cycles?

The consumption of the oil cause changes in the supply and demand. The United States produces 11 million barrels of oil every day. We are one of the biggest countries to have a big influence on the production and prices of the oil. The basic supply and demand theory explains that the if a product is produced more, the cheaper it should sell. If a country were to double the output of oil day, prices would fall and the Production is high, but the distribution of oil isn’t keeping up with the market. The United States builds an average of one oil refinery per 10 years. This is a net loss due to the fact construction has slowed down since 1970s. Since 1970s, the United States has 8 less oil refineries today. The reason why we are not oversupplied with cheap oil is because of the other countries’ higher net margin and the only operate at 62% of their capacity. Excess capacity is only there to meet future demand. With demand moving accordingly, oil prices will continue to be set mostly by the market — despite external players’ best efforts. (McFarlane)

The oil and gas industry is easily influenced by the economic segment as there are so many dependent sectors in this industry. Thus, if the economy is in the recession/inflation, there will be fewer oil and gas products manufactured as people will try to cut down on their energy expense such as vacation or having an own car to drive to work…

Oil price increases are generally thought to increase inflation and reduce economic growth. In terms of inflation, oil prices directly affect the prices of goods made with petroleum products. As mentioned above, oil prices indirectly affect costs such as transportation, manufacturing, and heating. The increase in these costs can in turn affect the prices of a variety of goods and services, as producers may pass production costs on to consumers. The extent to which oil price increases lead to consumption price increases depends on how important oil is for the production of a given type of good or service.

Several oil-countries have been facing economic and political turbulence as a result of the crash in oil prices, and there is disagreement among OPEC as how to handle the situation. (Krauss) While this is happening, America’s oil production continues to rise, as it inches closer to becoming an energy superpower in production and consumption; and countries that depend on their oil exports face recession.

The consensus from the 1970s and 1980s was that there was an inverse relationship between oil prices and real economic activities. This belief later changed when the oil price crash of the mid-1980s failed to boost economic growth. Researchers then believed that increasing oil prices negatively affect the economy whereas falling oil prices have very little impact and by the 1990s this impact was assumed to be minimal (DePratto, de Resende and Maier 2009). More recently, researchers have found that increases in the oil prices adversely affect the economy whereas the impact of a decline in oil prices on GDP growth is only negligible (Jimenez-Rodriguez and Sanchez

Economically, the oil industry will only pull us down as a country. Professionals believe that even though oil prices are falling, the production will start slowing and the prices will skyrocket again. The typical consumer would see that the price of oil barrels has fallen from one hundred to eighty dollars in the past year, but the consumer will not see the impact it will have outside of gas prices. Back in 2005, sixty percent of U.S. oil was imported, and the effects of a drop in prices would have been observed in the countries that we imported from. Today, however, only thirty percent of our oil is imported. With such a high amount of domestic oil, the low prices impacts the American

The United States consumes more than 25% of the world’s petroleum products which is a large percentage, considering only 3% of the world’s oil reserves are produced by the United States. Given the demand for petroleum products such as gasoline, understanding why Crude oil prices have skyrocketed in recent years, is not hard. According to the article “Ending America’s Oil Addiction,” the surge in crude oil prices can be reduced in large part to the simple concepts of supply and demand. (Cooper, 2008)

In a revealing article by George Perry (2001) the author discusses the economic impact that a disruption in the oil supplies would have on world oil prices. He states “Currently 28 percent of the world's crude oil comes from the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) consisting of Arab Muslim nations, some of which are not part of the OPEC cartel. The governing regimes in all these countries are at some risk [due to the war on terrorism].” He goes on to state that in a worst case scenario the economic consequences of oil supply disruption would be “oil prices rise to $161 per barrel driving gasoline price to $4.84 per gallon. The increase in the nation's bill for products of crude oil rises by about 10 percent of GDP, which adds perhaps 15 percent to the inflation rate in the first year. And the recession is the steepest and deepest of the postwar period, with GDP declining nearly 5 percent the first year.”

Let 's say a gas line blows up in a foreign country America is depending on for oil, as soon as that explosion occurs our price for crude oil goes up. January of 2017 saw a rise of 43 cents per barrel because OPEC cut the output of oil that resulted in a draining of oil stockpiles (“US crude settles”, 2017). OPEC plans to meet later in May and analysts feel that their will be an increase in oil prices as a result of the meeting (Landsman, 2017). This means we will be paying more.

As known to all, domestic trade is more costly than the international trade because of the existing comparative advantages in each country. A country in an autarky cannot benefit from arbitrage of trade; and naturally, the cost of production will be higher compared with the cost of international trade. In this case, the price of the domestic U.S. oil will raise. At the same time, the limiting imports will also ramp the price of imported oil from other countries, which results in an inevitable positive oil shock in an AS-AD model. Holding the aggregate demand curve unchanged, the growth of oil price straightly shifts the aggregate supply curve upward; the country confronted with inflation and short-run output cutbacks. It exactly matches the prediction that Yglesias said: “the overall economy would slow down with inflation-adjusted incomes falling” . Even if the economy could recover back to equilibrium after the shock disappears, it is still a long journey. Thus, restricting the imports would attract a visible shrink from the economy caused by booming of oil

This report will consist of the causes and consequences of the changing price of WTI crude oil and recent trends in the global price of oil. It will also include the effects of the ever-changing price of oil on individuals, business firms, governments and the economy.

Being at the centre of global economic activities, the U.S. has had its own fair share of oil price shocks. However, it did not just accept or try to change or distort the market forces behind oil prices. Rather, it sought to influence them by making supreme the goal of energy independence. It also intensified diplomatic efforts and negotiations to this end.

One macroeconomic objective that might be affected by rising oil prices is the current account of the balance of payments. The current account is a record of the trade in goods and services, income flows, and current transfer. The balance of payments is a record of the financial transactions over a period of time between a country and its trading partners.

A rise in oil prices impacts Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) negatively. Not all countries in the world are as developed as the United States, Britain, and Japan. Many countries only recently have begun modernizing. A huge factor in the rate of modernization is the price

According to Domm (2013), the author of the first article, apart from the unrest in Egypt, several other factors such as a plunge in the inventories of domestic crude oil could drive up demand and in the end trigger an increase in the price of gas. In the opinion of the author, although the problems facing Egypt (and Libya) have affected supply