While oil prices flashing across traders’ terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is even deeper.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, sank below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since 2003. Actual barrels of Saudi Arabian crude shipped to Asia are even cheaper, at $26 -- the lowest since early 2002 once inflation is factored in and near levels seen before the turn of the millennium.

Slumping prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is “unwinding,” according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Slowing investment and construction in China, the world’s biggest energy user, is “sending an enormous deflationary impetus through to the world, and that is a significant part of what’s happening in this oil-price collapse,” Turner, former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

David Fuller's view

This is why oil prices are likely to start moving higher as the year progresses.  There are limits to how far some oil producers can devalue to offset lower benchmark prices in USD, without causing even bigger problems in terms of their import costs of other goods and domestic inflation.

Saudi Arabia has the lowest production costs but is trying not to devalue against the USD, so revenue from current production is falling way short of what the country continues to spend.  This is ruinous so cutbacks and ideally a new agreement among producers – a contentious issue currently – are necessary to avoid an even worse disaster for nations heavily dependent on oil revenues.

(See also Monday’s article: Oil Seen Heading to $20 by Morgan Stanley on Dollar Strength)