The world can’t keep consuming more than it produces

Commodity markets have proved remarkable resilient, but there is no financial engineering solution that can replace missing barrels of oil, says Helen Thomas

Commodity markets have spent the past three months performing an extraordinary balancing act. Despite one of the most significant disruptions to global energy flows in decades, the global economy has continued to function remarkably smoothly. After an initial spike, prices for several key commodities have stabilised or even eased. Yet this apparent calm is deceptive. The reason the system has held together is due to governments, producers and consumers drawing down the buffers that normally protect the global economy from disruption. Those buffers are now approaching dangerous limits.

Inventories are being depleted at a remarkable pace. Global oil stockpiles have fallen to levels that senior industry executives describe as unprecedented. Aluminium markets are facing a similar squeeze. Bloomberg recently calculated that combined stockpiles tracked by the London Metal Exchange, CME Group and the Shanghai Futures Exchange would cover less than five days of global supply. 

The surprising resilience of commodity prices reflects the fact that the global economy has proved far more adaptable than many expected. Strategic reserves have been deployed on a large scale. The United States and Japan have both released oil from emergency stockpiles to cushion the loss of supply. American jet fuel output has reached record levels. Even China has managed to reduce crude imports without any obvious drawdown of its strategic petroleum reserves, which a recent report from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies suggests is due to changing refinery yields and industrial flexibility. In effect, China has been extracting greater flexibility from its industrial system rather than relying solely on inventory releases.

All of these developments demonstrate a market responding exactly as economic theory would predict. When a critical input becomes scarce, producers seek substitutes, inventories are drawn down and existing capacity is pushed harder. These adjustments can be remarkably effective. They buy time. But time is ultimately what inventories represent. Every barrel released from a reserve, every tonne withdrawn from a warehouse and every industrial workaround implemented today simply postpones the moment when supply and demand must once again be reconciled.

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a case in point. The United States entered this crisis from a significantly weaker position than prior energy shocks. Having peaked at more than 700m barrels in 2010, the SPR had already been reduced by roughly a third before the disruption in the Middle East began. Recent releases have helped stabilise markets, but they have done so by consuming the very buffer that exists to absorb future shocks. The critical question is not whether the SPR can technically be depleted. It cannot. The more important question is whether markets begin to doubt that policymakers possess sufficient reserves to continue cushioning disruptions indefinitely. Once that confidence disappears, the existence of barrels underground becomes less important than the perception that the shock absorbers are running out.

At some point, the arithmetic becomes unavoidable. The world cannot permanently consume more commodities than it produces. Strategic reserves can only be released once. Inventories can only be drawn down once. Refineries can only be reconfigured so far. Eventually, the familiar supply-and-demand framework begins to reassert itself and a new equilibrium must emerge between available supply and desired consumption.

Demand destruction

Economists have a sanitised term for this process: demand destruction. The reality is more painful. Demand destruction occurs when prices rise to a level that forces consumers and businesses to reduce their consumption. Households spend more on fuel and less on everything else. Airlines reduce routes. Manufacturers delay investment. Energy-intensive industries curtail production. Consumption falls not because people choose to consume less but because higher prices leave them no alternative.

This is why inventory levels matter so much. As long as stockpiles remain available, markets can postpone the adjustment. Once they are exhausted, prices become the primary mechanism through which balance is restored. Neil Chapman, senior vice-president at ExxonMobil, recently described the situation with unusual candour. Oil prices, he argued, have remained relatively contained because inventories have been drawn down. Yet those inventories are now approaching levels rarely seen in modern markets. Once those buffers disappear, the economics changes rapidly. As Chapman put it, “a model would say Brent will shoot up” towards $150 or even $160 per barrel.

Many governments will inevitably seek to shield consumers from the consequences. Price caps, subsidies and emergency fiscal packages are politically attractive when energy costs surge. Yet such measures do not eliminate the underlying economic loss. They merely redistribute it. If consumers are protected from higher prices then taxpayers, bondholders or currency holders must absorb the cost instead.

Price caps, subsidies and emergency fiscal packages are politically attractive when energy costs surge. Yet such measures do not eliminate the underlying economic loss

Japan offers an early illustration of this dynamic. The government has proposed additional fiscal support while simultaneously insisting that it will not require higher borrowing over the calendar year. Markets appear sceptical. Yields across the Japanese government bond curve have risen as investors attempt to identify where the cost of these interventions will ultimately fall. The pressure has not disappeared; it has simply been transferred elsewhere within the system.

This is the uncomfortable reality confronting policymakers around the world. There is no financial engineering solution that can replace missing barrels of oil. No accounting adjustment can create aluminium inventories that do not exist. No subsidy can transform a scarce commodity into an abundant one. The shock emanating from the Middle East is real, and while the global economy has responded impressively through substitution, efficiency gains and inventory drawdowns, these measures are temporary expedients rather than permanent solutions.

When inventories become critically low, markets force a new equilibrium. And a new equilibrium in a poorer world means exactly what it sounds like: higher prices, lower consumption and lower living standards. The commodity markets are not forecasting a poorer world. They are enforcing one.

Helen Thomas is founder and CEO of Blonde Money