新語のインプリケーション

日経新聞の連載記事「原油安、揺れる世界」で「サウジアメリカ」という造語を紹介していました。Asia Nikkeiでも訳されている記事なので力を入れたものなのでしょう。

　原油新秩序――。米ゴールドマン・サックスはシェールが起こす地殻変動をそう呼ぶ。需給を重んじた既存勢力を押しのけ増産に走るシェール業者は今や米原油生産の６割を担う。英ＢＰによると米原油生産は日量1100万バレル台と過去５年で６割増加。サウジアラビアやロシアを超え昨年39年ぶりに世界一となった。「サウジアメリカ」の造語まで生まれた。

October 2, 2015 4:00 pm JST
Shale revolution, economic slowdowns
Low oil prices reshaping the world economy

"The New Oil Order" is the term coined by Goldman Sachs to encapsulate the tectonic shifts in the world energy landscape arising from the sudden bounty from U.S. fracking, which has pumped up oil production in the U.S. by 60% in five years.
Shale operators account for 60% of crude output in the U.S.
Last year, the U.S. became the world's biggest oil producer for the first time in 39 years, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia, according to BP.
The U.S. rise to the top of the oil production hierarchy has led to a new term, "Saudi America."

「サウジアメリカ」という見出しで29ヶ月アメリカが算出量世界一だという報告があります。

Mark J. Perry @Mark_J_Perry
July 15, 2015 4:32 pm | AEIdeas
Energy superpower ‘Saudi America’ has been the world’s largest petroleum producer for 29 months in a row

Bottom Line: The new EIA data on international petroleum production through March provides more evidence that America’s shale energy revolution is taking the US from “resource scarcity” to a new era of “resource abundance.” The shale revolution has transformed the US into a formidable energy superpower and America now consistently produces a greater “total oil supply” than Saudi Arabia (by more than 3M bpd for the last five months) and has led the world in total petroleum production for 29 straight months. This energy bonanza in the US — described as the “energy equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down” — would have been largely unthinkable even six years ago. But then thanks to revolutionary drilling and extraction techniques that were developed by American “petropreneurs” and are “made in the USA,” vast oceans of previously locked shale oil and gas have been accessed across the country, making the US the world’s No. 1 petroleum producer for 29 months running.

雑誌Economistは昨年の2月にすでに「サウジアメリカ」という語を使って記事を書いていました。この雑誌の分析力の高さを感じますね。産油国アメリカの経緯を丁寧に紹介してくれています。

The economics of shale oil
Saudi America
The benefits of shale oil are bigger than many Americans realise. Policy has yet to catch up
Feb 15th 2014 | MIDLAND, TEXAS | From the print edition

Until the early 1970s, America was the world’s largest oil producer and the Texas Railroad Commission stabilised world prices by dictating how much the state’s producers could pump. When Arab states slapped an oil embargo on Israel’s Western allies after the six-day war in 1967, Texas cushioned the blow by allowing a massive production boost.
But rising consumption and declining production eroded the state’s spare capacity, and in March 1972 Texas called for flat-out production. “This is a damn historic occasion and a sad occasion,” the Texas Railroad Commission’s chairman declared. When Arab producers imposed another embargo the next year, prices rocketed. America had lost the role of world price arbiter to OPEC, a cartel dominated by despotic regimes. American politicians tried desperately to curb consumption (for example, by lowering speed limits) and to conserve supplies (by banning crude-oil exports in 1975).
American production declined steadily from a peak of 9.6m barrels a day in 1970 to under 5m in 2008. About then, independent producers began adapting the new technologies of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling, first used to tap shale gas, to oil. Total American production has since risen to 7.4m barrels a day, and the Energy Information Administration, a federal monitor, reckons it will return to its 1970 record by 2019. The International Energy Agency is more bullish; it reckons that by 2020 America will have displaced Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer, pumping 11.6m barrels a day.



「サウジアメリカ」という言葉の持つインプリケーションはどのようなものか気になってしまいます。アメリカが産油国で1位を示すだけなら何も「サウジ」をつけなくてもいいじゃないですか。単に面白いだけなら鮮度も落ちるので、2年間も使われないと思うのです。そのインプリケーションを感じさせてもらえる記事がニューヨークタイムズにありました。ここではアメリカ南部の石油産出地域を“Cowboyistan”と呼ぶことを紹介してくれています。

New Balance of Power
By CLIFFORD KRAUSSAPRIL 22, 2015

HOUSTON — For the better part of the last century, crude oil prices have swung like a pendulum, pushing and pulling the fortunes of nations. More often than not, global supplies of the volatile commodity were controlled by the rulers of desert domains who would otherwise have been powerless had it not been for the oil that bubbled beneath their thrones.

That pendulum is on the move again, sending the price of oil cascading to less than $45 this winter from more than $100 a barrel last June, and it may fall further in the months ahead. On the surface, this latest oil boom gone bust may feel like history repeating itself, but there is a vital difference this time: The center of the oil world has spun from the sands of Saudi Arabia to the shale oil fields of Texas and North Dakota, a giant new oil patch some wildcatters have begun to call “Cowboyistan.”

昨年の10月のOPECでの生産量の話し合いが書かれていたのですが、サウジアラビアが原油安にもかかわらず生産量を減らすことに反対したのは市場シェアをアメリカに奪われ影響力がなくなってしまうことを恐れたとあります。

But the Saudis and their Gulf allies said no. They argued that if they cut production, they would merely lose market share to the surging American producers who were increasing daily production by a million barrels year in and year out with no end in sight. The decision effectively forfeited the cartel’s traditional role as the global oil swing producer — the one and only supplier with the volume of production to raise and lower prices by managing the cartel’s output.

The decision came as a shock to the oil market. From the moment OPEC decided to keep its production constant at 30 million barrels a day, a fairly gradual price retreat that began in July morphed into a nose dive as commodity traders dumped their oil positions. Many independent American producers saw the move as a direct attack on them, but it was really a throwing in the towel to the new reality of growing American oil output.

The demise of OPEC as the price manipulator is what virtually every American president since Richard Nixon had in mind when they promised to find a way to make the United States energy independent, not chained to Middle East or OPEC oil, after the oil embargoes of the 1960s and 1970s.

最後の方の記事でも書いていますが、フラッキングの技術もあがり、フラッキングは需給に合わせて生産体制を柔軟に変更できるので、今後はアメリカが石油市場に多大な影響力を行使すると読んでいます。

There is a strong chance, energy experts say, that this could be the beginning of decades of United States dominance in the oil markets, and that dominance will be accompanied by relatively inexpensive energy. The shale fields around the country are plentiful, and there is much more to be drilled. Lower prices have already driven down drilling and other service company costs by more than 15 percent.

But more important, the drilling and fracking technology that has made the shale revolution possible is rapidly improving, bringing production costs even lower and raising the yield of each well. For instance, more powerful computers are improving multidimensional geological modeling for well planning. And production output is improving through experimentation in the mixing and use of proppants like sand and ceramics to keep fractures in shale open to release more oil.

Yutaの解釈に過ぎませんが「サウジアメリカ」という語を使われる場合には、アメリカが単に生産量が一位になりましたというより、石油市場を支配するようになりましたというインプリケーションがあるのかなと思いました。こういう造語って意味はすぐにわかるんですけど、インプリケーションを把握するのに苦労することもあるのでやっかいですよね。