Oil Headed for $225 A Barrel?
As billions pour into projects aimed at making the Canadian prairies the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, supposedly insulating Canada from an American economic downturn, two major Canadian news sources foreshadow a gloomy future for The Great White North. Canwest News (via Canada.com) quotes a study conducted by CIBC World Markets (the investment arm of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) that suggests oil prices could surge to $225 per barrel by 2012. That would push Canadian gasoline prices to about $2.25/L (or about $8 gallon at current exchange rates). According to Jeff Rubin, World Market’s chief economist, oil supplies are static; demand isn’t. “[For] every extra driver that gets a car and goes on the road in those (developing) countries in the next five to six years, somebody’s having to get off the road in the OECD countries.” Meanwhile, MontrĂ©al’s La Presse ran the results of a study conducted by energy analyst and longtime doom-and-gloomer Patrick DĂ©ry. He predicted Peak Oil’s (long-awaited?) arrival in 2018; QuĂ©bec and other net importers of energy will run out of oil supply by 2030.Â