Both giants are playing games lah.
If you look at the entire oil industry, Arabs are only the producer
of the raw material known as crude oil. These crude oil is like
iron ores which needs special facilities to process to refine them
into petrol, diseal or kerosene. The Arabs and OPEC members, would
sell the oil to the few international giants like Exxon Mobile,
British Petrol, Shell etc, these giants are the ones which control
the majorities of the oil refineries in the world. Their work is
the MOST value added part of the oil industry. Small refineries are
very difficult to compete with them due to the sheer volume of oil
process capability and distribution network. In addition, these
giants are very active in the trading markets (New York, London
& SINGAPORE, suprise!!). Oil is traded as a commodities in
these 3 international market for futures.
Now you see, majorities of the oil industries are in hands of Ang
Moh already. Our indon and malaysian friends oil fields are
actually also "managed" by these few giants. Why? You must remember
that the oil requirement in the world is very big. They are traded
in volumes beyond your comprehension, thus only big giants are
capable and confident to meet the stingent requirements listed in
the trading contracts. Any delays in fulfilling the trading
contracts will results in many millions dollars of compensation to
the customers.
So despite our US friends are pumping expensive oil, they are still
at the winning ends. The oil giants are mostly listed in States
would report strong profits and generate employments in the home
turfs. The recent oil price spike has also encourage US to do
drilling in the California and Alsaka. Soon, we will see States
becoming and net oil exporter in the world stage as well.
Our china friends are not in the losing ends either. They host the
huge community of US companies in the China. Any expensive oil in
china will straight away pass on to the manufacturing cost of the
US based companies in china. These will hurt their US profit
reporting coming soon in Dec 2005. The recent oil shortage saga is
a show for US to see, let the US decide if the benefits for cheapo
oil can be shared with China. More will unfold in 17 Sep 2005, when
Chinese President WU Jin Tao visit Mr Bush in States and discussed
it over the fireplace on how to share the cake.
