Thursday, March 31, 2011

Jim Rogers: High Oil Prices, Nuclear Energy Are Here to Stay

Japan's nuclear disaster is going to increase demand for oil and natural gas and despite concerns surrounding nuclear energy, it's not going to disappear, says commodities investor Jim Rogers. Uranium and nuclear power stocks will be good buys again in a couple of years, and oil will be strong for a decade.

"Unless we find something to replace oil and coal, we have to have nuclear… whether we like it or not," Rogers tells CNBC.

Japanese stocks, meanwhile, are good buys as the country will recover from the earthquake and nuclear disaster.

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Jim Rogers
"It's going to cause slowdown in the Japanese economy … eventually though they are going to have to rebuild and they will rebuild," Rogers says.

"I don't think Japan is going to fall off the face of the earth and I own Japan."

Oil prices have been high lately due to concerns that demand will rise due to the disaster in Japan as well as to ongoing unrest in the Middle East.

OPEC countries could report oil export revenues of over $1 trillion 2011, according to the International Energy Agency, the Financial Times reports.

For that to happen, oil prices would have to average over $100 a barrel for this year.

Oil prices are trading around $104 a barrel and are starting to chip away at consumer confidence in the U.S., which had been improving until March.

"Consumer confidence is starting to erode and high oil prices probably have something to do with it," says Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix in Switzerland, according to the Associated Press.

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