I’ve been thinking about risks for 2015. Which got me thinking about Putin’s grim situation. Low oil rices are already making things tough. Its only going to get worse. So what’s his fastest route to reversing that oil price drop?
Start a war. Provoke a crisis. Get some fear premium back into the market….
This could mean cranking up the heat in Ukraine, Crimea, or somewhere else in the neighborhood. More creative would be to stoke crises in other vulnerable suppliers – Iraq, Iran, Venezuela. Even more creative (although hopefully unlikely) would be “terrorist” attacks on oil tankers and/or LNG (liquefied natural gas) carriers.
The bigger point is that many 2015 outlooks are based on the persistence of suddenly cheap energy. But there are people and nations desperate to reverse that trend. Its worth thinking about how they might do that. And what happens if they succeed?
“Lets have a War” Classic punk rock. Clever lyrics.
