CALL it the hydrocarbon equivalent of the butterfly effect. As oil and gas supplies tighten during the northern winter, disruptions as remote as a hairline fracture on a piece of Scottish pipeline, and an explosion in an Austrian natural-gas plant, have repercussions felt around the world.
Start with the pipeline. After Ineos, a chemicals company, detected a growing crack on a piece of pipe near Aberdeen, on December 11th it said it would shut the main Forties pipeline carrying North Sea oil and gas to Britain for weeks. The suspension of a pipeline carrying 450,000 barrels a day (b/d) of crude, in a global market of almost 98m b/d, would not normally be disruptive. Yet Brent crude, the benchmark for pricing much of the world’s seaborne crude, is itself partly priced on the flow of crude from 80 fields that feed the Forties pipeline, magnifying the impact.
Futures prices for Brent crude delivered in February…
The Economist: Finance and economics
