Who's Afraid of $100 oil?

摘要

The price of a barrel of oil fell below $100 a barrel in 2014 and has stayed below that psychologically important threshold since. However, Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, is up 46 percent in the past 12 months, and in recent days has been testing $80. Part of the increase is explained by a resurgent global economy: The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to pick up to 3.9 percent this year, the strongest since 2011. What's worrying, though, is that supplies are more constrained than they've been in years, so disruptions to output can quickly reverberate from the wellhead all the way to the gasoline pump. Here's a look at the impact higher prices could have on a variety of important actors.