“Japan Power Summit 2024”where electricity stakeholders participated to have various events, etc. was held in Tokyo on October 23.

The whole venue was very excited. Most of the participants were from the electric power industry, and participants from parties involved in commodity futures industry seemed to be very few. However, outside the main venue, several commodity futures traders such as Okachi and Nissan Securities each had their own booths.

Although Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) has been an exchange specializing in energy products since it became a subsidiary of Japan Exchange Group (JPX), trading volume of gasoline and kerosene listed on TOCOM remains at zero due to the government’s subsidy policy. In fact, among products listed on TOCOM, the only traded products are electricity and crude oil. However, all of these products are important materials that form the basis of economic activity.

Why are they important materials ? For example, Russia becomes more powerful when oil prices rise, and its domestic politics also becomes stable. On the contrary, as oil prices fall, its national power declines and domestic politics also tends to become chaotic. Russia is the world’s second largest producing country of crude oil and the world’s leading producing country of natural gas. The country’s economic structure is dependent on energy resources－in other words, it is made up of oil revenue. When the last general secretary of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was interviewed by the Japanese writer Masaru Sato in 2010, in response to the question “What was the biggest reason for the dissolution of the Soviet Union ? ”, he answered “That was an increase in crude oil production by Saudi Arabia. As a result, the fall in oil prices directly hit the economy of the Soviet Union. Impact of oil prices on the national systems could not be analyzed” At some point, energy products prices transform into the biggest and most powerful weapons that can destroy even great powers.

（Futures Tribune・issued October 29, 2024 ・no.3321）