WHY THE PRICE OF 'PEAK OIL' IS FAMINE
Vulnerable regions of the world face the risk of famine over the next three years as rising energy costs spill over into a food a crunch, according to a US investment bank Goldman Sachs.
"We've never been at a point in commodities where we are today," said Jeff Currie, the bank's commodity chief and closely watched oil guru.
Golbal oil output has been stagnant for four years, failing to keep up with rampant demand from Asia and the Mid-east. China's imports rose 14pc last year. Biofuels from grain, oil seed and sugar are plugging the gap, but drawing away food supplies at a time when the world is adding more than 70m mouths to feed a year.
"Markets are as tight as a drum and now the US has hit the stimulus button," said Mr Currie in his 2008 outlook. "We have never seen this before when commodity prices were already at record highs. Over the next 18 to 36 months we are porbably going to crisis mode accross the commodity complex.
"The key is going to be agriculture. China is terrified of the current situation. It has real shortages," he said, referencing China still having memories of starvation in the 1960s seared in its collective mind.
While the US housing crash poses some threat to the price of metals and energy, the effect has largely occurred already. The slide in crude prices over the past month may have been caused by funds liquidating derivatives contracts to cover other demands rather than by recession fears. Goldman Sachs forecasts that oil will be priced at $105 a barrel by the end of 2008.
The current "supercycle" is a break with history because energy and food have "converged" in price and can increasingly be switched from one to another.
Corn can be used for ethanol in cars and power plants, for platics, as well as in baking tortillas. Natural gas can be made into fertiliser for output. "Peak oil" is morphing into "Peak Food".
Land use for biofuels has shot up from 12m to more than 80m hectares worldwide over six years. Biofuel provides 3pc of global energy needs, which will rise to an estimated 10.6pc by 2030.
In a pure market, sugar cane would be the only viable biofuel with a cost of $35 a barrel(oil equivalent). The others are sugar beet($103), corn ($81), wheat ($145), rapeseed ($209), soybean ($232), cellulose ($305).
Subisidies drive the business. The US offers tax relief of $1 a gallon for biodiesel. The EU has a 10pc biofuel target by 2010.
The crop sqitch comes just as China and India make the leap to an animal-based diet, replicating the pattern seen in Japan abd Korea, where people raised their protein intake nine-fold as they became rich. It takes 8.3 grams of soya or corn feed to produce a 1g weight gain in cattle - compared with 3.1g for pigs, 2g for chicken and 1.5g for fish.
Mr Currie said investment cycles in energy typically last about 10 to 12 years as producers struggle to catch up with demand. However, this cycle has been short-circuited by politicians after barely six years.
"The political environment is extremely hostile. The world is looking like the 17th century under mercantilism when countries saw economics as a zero-sum game. They exported as much as they could to get gold, and erected enormous barriers. China looks like that, so does Russia, the Mid-East and most of Africa and Latin America," he said.
While the west has much of the skill for developing energy projects, it is blocked by nationalist petro-states from investing directly.