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| 2006-9-6 16:22:39 [点击数：2136] |
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《参考消息》2006年8月5日第4版：“石油瘾”显出痛苦症状
【英国《每日电讯报》8月1日文章】题：石油“瘾”面临痛苦的脱瘾症状
Oil 'addicts' face painful withdrawal symptoms
By Tom Stevenson
(Filed: 01/08/2006)
What is the most important number in the world? It was 73.39 yesterday lunchtime, while in the run-up to Christmas 1998 it was just 10.75. Lord Browne thinks it will be 40 again while Goldman Sachs believes it will h______① 100. （1）It is, of course, the price in dollars of a barrel of oil.
The value of the world's most significant commodity is important because, as George Bush noted recently, we are "addicted to oil" and there are no areas of our economic life that are not affected by its cost.
It h_______② needs pointing out, therefore, that the seven-fold rise in the price of oil in eight years is a problem. With the growth of the US economy slowing sharply in the second quarter, it seems self-evident that we are navigating dangerous waters.
The reason the oil price has soared is simple. （2）Demand is growing at 2pc-3pc a year while production is slowly but surely declining as the world's giant oil-fields dry up. Since oil was first produced commercially in the US in the 1850s, supply has increased to meet growing demand. For the first time in 150 years that is no longer the case for a couple of reasons.
First, a combination of n_______③ and manmade disasters and conflicts from the Gulf of Mexico to Iraq and Nigeria has forced the rest of the world to jam open the spigots[1] to satisfy demand.
（3）After years of underinvestment when the oil price was in the doldrums[2], we simply cannot pump any faster and rectifying that situation could take years.
Second, if you believe the gloom-mongers, we are fast running out of commercially exploitable oil reserves. There is considerable debate about how close we are to a peak in the global production of oil but there is a w_______④ of expert opinion that suggests we are close to that tipping point today.
（A）______________________________________.（中国今天的石油消耗量已经从上个世纪90年代初的每天300万桶增加到每天700万桶，增长了一倍〔double〕以上。）In India consumption has also doubled to around 2.5 million barrels a day.
If you consider that the US, with a population of something like an eighth of those two combined, gets through 20 million barrels a day, you get a sense of the potential for the supply/demand equation to deteriorate.
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this grim picture. Here are six, but there are many more:
（4）First, persistently high energy prices are most probably here to stay. Although oil producers like Lord Browne are obviously beneficiaries of a high price, they have a vested interest[3] in not scaring the horses. The most profitable scenario for them is a price that keeps the world economy humming so they are bound to claim everything is rosy.
Second, a high oil price should finally fuel the development of alternative energy sources. Merrill Lynch estimates that with oil priced between $50 and $70 a barrel, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind and geothermal energy sources are all relatively competitive. Only hydrogen fuel cells and solar energy still look too expensive to be viable substitutes. Big corporations around the world are snapping up small wind and biofuel businesses and that process has b_____
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| 2006-9-6 16:22:39 [点击数：2136] |
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