Re: Heard a energy analyst just now
Quote:
Ian C said:
Just a few thoughts:
25 years ago I visited China for the first time and there were no private cars - the roads were full of oxen, horses and above all, bicycles. One day in The Forbidden City I saw a queue of people strething about 1/4 mile - they were waiting to have their photograph taken with a car!
Ten years later, driving in from Beijing airport, one of the first cars I saw was a Ferrari.
The demand for cars in China is only just starting and in another ten years time who can guess how much oil is going to be consumed there ?
China has a car manufacturing industry in its infancy and I cannot see that they will want to do anything but make that industry grow so demand for oil from China is going to have a dramatic effect.
In the West, you are not going to get people to move away from cars. Public transport is expensive, inefficient and inconvenient.Petrol price rises will only have a limited effect on consumption and people will find a way to finance it just as they did with property. House prices in the UK have probably tripled in the last ten years but it hasn't killed demand and we're certainly not earning three times as much as we were ten years ago
Governments know that we will keep paying for oil and for our cars and they will keep pushing taxes on motoring as far as they dare because it is an enormous source of revenue
both in the tax they charge directly and in indirect taxation such as speed cameras, annual vehicle licence, new vehicle registration charge and so on.
So, motoring is expensive, it's going to get more expensive but we are lucky enough to own and drive fantastic cars!
p.s. compared with the money we lose in depreciation on any car, the cost of fuel is relatively minor.......
Interesting read in the news:
"The structural rebalancing will provide greater stability to the Chinese economy and "could have profound implications" for the global economy and world financial markets, said Stephen S. Roach, chief economist with Morgan Stanley, at the annual meetings of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in this scenic town of China's southernmost province of Hainan.
Delivering a speech titled "China's Rebalancing Challenge", Roach pointed out that a mid-course correction in China's development model is in the offing, that is to shift away from export and investment-powered growth to more of a consumer-driven dynamic....
China's pro-consumption initiatives will also boost Chinese import demand, reducing its trade surplus and thereby providing support for its major Asian trading partners such as Japan, Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea, and alleviating the tightened relations with the United States and European Union in currency and trade issues."
hmmmmmm
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