Speaker: Professor Ferdinand E. Banks, Uppsala University, Sweden
Date: Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Time: 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Venue: ESI Conference Room
29 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Block A #10-01
Singapore 119620
Please send us your name, organisation and email address via the ESI website here . For enquiries, please contact Ms. Jan Lui at 65162000.
About the seminar:
The purpose of this seminar is to discuss some important characteristics of the world oil scene from the evolution of OPEC to the present, particularly the movement of the oil price. Special attention will be given to the various oil price spikes/shocks, the sustained oil price rise of 2008, the decline (and unexpected) recovery of the oil price, as well as the physical (or geopolitical) peaking of the global oil supply. The relationship between the price of oil and the global macroeconomy will also be explored, plus the role that speculation has played in the oil market. This seminar is based on an article that Professor Banks is writing for Energy Science and Technology.
An excerpt:
“In discussions about peak oil, there are still a number of researchers and concerned observers who say that it will never happen, and the leadership of several major energy companies do not seem reluctant to take this position… Although many of us are losing our interest in the „peak issue‟, the insistence that peaking will not or cannot take place in a particular region, or more important globally, is a wonderful example of the deliberate spreading of misinformation... The directors of major oil firms know more about these matters than the rest of us, but some of them undoubtedly believe that is in their interest and the interests of their stockholders to make claims about the oil future that are patently untrue. The same applies to OPEC.”
About the Speaker:
Ferdinand E. Banks, from Uppsala University in Sweden, did his undergraduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology (electrical engineering) and Roosevelt University (Chicago), graduating with honours in economics. He also attended the University of Maryland and UCLA. His MSc is from Stockholm University and his PhD is from Uppsala University.
He has been a visiting professor at five universities in Australia, two in France, the Czech University (Prague), Stockholm University, as well as Nanyang Technical University, and has held energy economics professor ship in France, Hong Kong and the Asian Institute of Technology. He has also been a lecturer in mathematical economics in Dakar and Lisbon.
He was an econometrician for UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland for three years, and a fellow of the Reserve Bank of Australia when he was a visiting professor of mathematical economics at the University of New South Wales. He has been a consultant for the Hudson Institute in Paris. He has published 12 books, including two energy economics textbooks and one book on international finance, and more than 200 articles of various lengths.
This seminar will be held under Chatham House rules: “when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant may be revealed.”
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