WATCH ABOVE: Tom Clark looks at the history of oil’s ups and downs and how we got to where we are today.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced last week he was pushing back the federal budget’s date until at least April because of plunging oil prices and economic uncertainty.
Still, he says there will be a surplus before the end of the 2015-16 fiscal year (March 31, 2016).
This week’s West Block primer drills into into the commodity causing all this trouble: oil.
Oil has a history of building itself up and then letting us down. After the steep drop of the 2008 recession, oil has been enjoying a very strong rise.
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It’s been a pretty nice ride. But little did we know that we hadn’t seen anything yet.
High oil prices naturally brought more oil on line: fracking in Canada and the United States, increased production in the oil sands and in Russia and a return of oil production in Iraq and Libya.
At the same time, though, cars were becoming more efficient and consumers were looking for all sorts of ways to get off their addiction to high-priced oil. And then, the laws of supply and demand kicked in.
So, another bust. But this one is huge — and experts are saying it may last a whole lot longer than the last one.
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