《油价波动-油价起伏的历史和未来》，前言部分中英对照-2005年油价是多少

Robert McNally, Crude Volatility - The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices, Columbia University Press, 2017

罗伯特*麦克纳里，《油价波动-油价起伏的历史和未来》，哥伦比亚大学出版社，2017

Preface 前言

My inspiration to write this book stemmed from a lifelong passion for history and a professional career as an analyst, official, and consultant involved with the global oil market, energy policy, and geopolitics. My introduction to oil was somewhat accidental. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, West Africa, I headed back to school to pursue a master’s degree in international economics and U.S. foreign policy. My plan was to become a history teacher after graduating. But I needed a part time job to help pay graduate school expenses, and was hired as a research intern at an oil consulting firm.

在我的职业生涯中，我作为分析师、政府官员以及顾问等角色主要工作在全球原油市场、能源政策以及地缘政治等领域，这些工作经历以及我个人对于历史的热爱直接促使了我撰写本书。我接触到原油相关的工作其实非常偶然，我曾在非洲西部的塞内加尔担任国际维和部队的志愿者，结束这段经历后，我重返校园攻读国际经济与美国政策专业的硕士学位。我那时的规划是毕业后成为一名老师，但我当时需要一份兼职收入来支付我研究生期间的开支，机缘巧合我去了石油行业的一家咨询公司做研究实习生。

My unplanned exposure to energy started during a tumultuous period in the oil market and an active one in energy policymaking. The 1990–1991 Gulf War had just ended and the George H. W. Bush administration was beginning to implement new oxygenated fuel regulations on gasoline. Daniel Yergin’s magnificent history of oil, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, had just been released and, like many, I devoured it with relish. In the course of punching oil market data into spreadsheets and analyzing OPEC and energy regulations, I realized the historical and contemporary oil market combined my main professional interests—economics, policy, and geopolitics—in a thrilling fashion. So my career path changed. I joined the firm after graduating and began a rewarding journey in energy. (Though I still would like to be a history teacher one day.)

我误打误撞进入能源领域的时候正值国际油价剧烈波动及能源政策制定非常活跃的一段时期。1990至1991年间，恰逢海湾战争结束，乔治布什（George H. W. Bush）政府开始实施乙醇汽油（译者注：通过向汽油中加入10%体积的乙醇改善汽油车冬季的有害一氧化碳排放）政策。那时，Daniel Yergin的关于油价历史的杰作（The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, 中文译名：奖赏:石油、金钱与权力全球大博弈）刚刚发行，我酣畅淋漓的读完收获很大。后来，我在向电子表格录入能源市场的数据、分析OPEC和相关能源政策时，意识到对过去和现在油价的进行分析正是我的专业兴趣所在：可以将经济、政策、地缘政治等因素以一种令人兴奋的方式结合起来。所以我的职业生涯发生了转变，我毕业后加入了我参加实习的这家咨询公司，在能源领域开启了一段收获颇丰的职业生涯（虽然我依旧可能在将来某天成为一名历史老师）。

This book elaborates on analyses developed over the past ten years and shared mainly with my colleagues and clients. My central thesis is the recent dramatic swings in oil prices, including the bust since 2014 but also the mid-2000s boom and bust in 2008, need be understood in the historical context of the broader economic and policy drivers that impact the oil market. This required a fresh look at oil’s history, focusing on the critical role that supply control played in achieving the widely cherished goal of stabile oil prices. This focus led to my conclusion that, amid the boom in Asian demand in the early to mid-2000s and the more recent, surprise arrival of U.S. shale production, the most important feature of today’s oil market is the absence of a swing producer able and willing to adjust supply to keep oil prices stable. Since the early 1930s, as this book details, someone has been trying to manage supply to keep oil prices from behaving as they have in the last ten years. No longer having such a swing producer implies a return to price volatility for which we have all but lost living memory and which we will find troublesome to manage. I presented these ideas at academic events and in congressional testimony, published some of the key themes with my co-author Michael Levi in Foreign Affairs in 2011 and 2014, and wrote a paper synopsizing this argument in December 2015 for the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, where I am a fellow.

本书详细呈现了过去十年间我通过与同事和客户分享讨论而得到的一些见解。我认为近年来油价的剧烈震荡，包括2005年左右的油价大涨、2008年以及2014年以来的油价大跌，须放在更宏观的经济和政策驱动力的历史背景中去理解。这些来自经济和政策的驱动力对原油市场具有很大的影响。对油价波动的理解需要从新的视角出发看待油价的历史，聚焦在油价的核心功能，即通过控制原油供应实现油价稳定这一人们普遍珍视目标。无论是21世纪00年代早期到中期亚洲需求的快速增长，还是近年来美国页岩油量产的突然到来，聚焦在油价核心功能使我得到如下结论：当今原油市场最重要的特点是缺乏一个主导性的产油国（或组织）有能力并且有意愿通过调整原油的市场供应去稳定原油价格。正如本书详述，自20世纪30年代早期，人们已试图通过管理原油供应控制油价，使油价偏离过去十年间（20世纪20年代）的走势。缺乏这样的主导性产油国（或组织）意味着油价波动重归活跃，对此我们已不在适应，我们将会发现难以管控油价的波动。我在一些学术交流活动和国会证词中讲述了上述观点，并且在2011到2014年间同我的合著者Michael Levi在《国际事务》刊物上发表了一些专栏文章，并在2015年底给哥伦比亚大学全球能源政策研究中心（我是该研究中心的荣誉会员）撰写了一篇论文总结了这些观点。

I decided to write this book to explore more deeply how oil’s history can clarify recent trends and shed light on tomorrow’s path, and to present my findings to the general reader as well as the energy expert.

为了更深入的探寻油价的历史是如何解释近年来的油价走势，及其对未来的价格走势的预示，我决定写作此书，将我在该领域的收获呈现给广大读者和能源领域的专家学者们。

Tackling this topic presented formidable challenges, not the least of which was getting good historical data and information. For “barrel counters,” the search for better data is a never-ending and arduous quest. Historical data on prices and spare production capacity—central to this book—are especially scarce and patchy. I am therefore delighted and proud that my able research assistant Fernando Ferreira and I were able to unearth historical data and present two novel data sets, neither of which (to my knowledge) existed until now.

围绕该主题展开论述面临巨大的挑战，其中最困难的当属获得可靠的历史数据和信息。对于“原油产量统计员”来说，搜寻高质量的相关数据是一项永无止尽的艰巨任务，因为油价和过剩产能的历史数据(这本书的核心)非常稀缺，且数据质量参差不齐。因此，我和我得力的研究助理Fernando Ferreira能够挖掘历史数据并呈现出两套全新的数据，我感到非常高兴和自豪，据我所知，这两套数据之前从未被收集整理过。

The first data set is a continuous, market-based price series for U.S. crude prices extending back to 1859 and continuing to the present on a monthly basis. Constructing this series entailed digging up prices based on field quotations, exchange-traded pipeline certificates (a proxy for crude oil prices), prices paid by Standard Oil’s purchasing agency, and data from the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Information Administration.

第一组数据含有自1859年至今每月度连续的、基于市场的美国原油价格数据。构建该组数据需要通过多种信息渠道挖掘原油的历史价格数据，包括油田询价、交易所管道证书（一种原油价格的金融衍射品）、下游公司向标准石油的购买价、美国石油学会（API）和能源信息署（EIA）记录的原油价格。

The key issue here is frequency of the data. BP helpfully publishes historical crude oil prices back to 1859 on an annual basis. But annual averages fall short of illustrating boom-bust price trends as more frequent and dramatic price swings—daily, weekly, monthly—get lost in the annual average. Unless otherwise noted, all prices cited in this book, including this new monthly historical price series, are in nominal instead of real or inflation-adjusted terms. Using real prices would not change the story from a volatility perspective, but I decided to use nominal prices to better connect the prevailing historical narrative with price changes. This monthly crude oil price series is presented in figure I.1.

原油价格数据的关键问题是数据点的间隔时间，英国石油公司（BP）发布了基于年份统计的原油历史价格数据（可追溯至1859年），但年平均价格数据无法反映更短周期内（如每天、每周、每月）的油价波动历史。除非另有说明，本书中引用的原油价格数据，包括新的基于月份统计的价格数据，均使用考虑通胀因素后的折算价格而非实际价格。从油价波动率的角度来看，采用实际价格并不会改变本书分析的结论，但我决定采用折算价格（译者注：考虑通胀因素，将历史实际价格折算到当前价格）以便将大家普遍接受的历史叙事方式与油价改变结合起来。这个基于月度统计的油价（采用实际价格）历史如图I.1所示。

国际油价历史（起伏阶段I，洛克菲勒时代，起伏阶段II，德州时代，OPEC时代，起伏阶段III）

The second unique data set developed for this book is for U.S. spare production capacity extending back to 1940 and continuous data on U.S. and global spare capacity since 1955 (that is, including the Seven Sisters until the early 1970s and OPEC afterward). This entailed exhuming information from various government and industry reports and publications. Currently, EIA’s published OPEC spare production capacity extends back to 2003.

原油剩余产能是本书的第二组特色数据，美国和全球的剩余产能数据可分别回溯至1940年和1955年（包括至20世纪早期的“七姐妹”及后来的OPEC主导时期），这需要从大量的政府和工业报告及相关出版物中挖掘出有价值的数据。目前，能源信息署（EIA）公布的OPEC剩余产能数据只能回溯至2003年。

My goal is to contribute to our understanding of the economic and political forces that shaped oil prices in history so as to better understand them today and tomorrow. Whether I have succeeded I leave to you, dear reader, to judge.

我的目标是帮助我们认识历史上影响油价波动的经济和政治因素，以便我们更好地理解当下和未来的油价波动。亲爱的读者，我是否成功，留给您来评判吧。

原创翻译：石油微课，2018年7月3日

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