Oil Prices: High Enough to Help, High Enough to Hurt

From Environmental Capital:

Clean-energy types (and environmentalists) have been hoping oil prices go back up, to recover some of the momentum clean energy lost thanks to the economic meltdown.

But now that crude prices are indeed sneaking up to $60 a barrel—New York futures are up about 2% and dancing all around the $58 mark—the worry is pricier crude could short-circuit any economic recovery.

JP Morgan, in a research note today, estimates that a $10 a barrel increase in oil prices sustained over a one-month period takes $5.5 billion from consumer and industry pockets. “In the current fragile economic state, that may be an unnecessary shock,” the bank says in a research note.

Using J.P. Morgan’s rule of thumb, higher crude prices have nicked about $15 billion since Christmas. If oil keeps rising, it could improve the outlook for everything from wind farms to General Motor’s makeover—provided rising oil doesn’t poleax the economic recovery first....MORE