Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com

As big a shock as $4-a-gallon gasoline is proving to be for many Americans, the warning signs have been there for the last four years, during which time pump prices have consistently recorded huge year-over-year jumps averaging roughly 50 cents a gallon. While $4 gas isn’t likely to crush investors’ portfolios, there are other energy shocks on the horizon that could. In this EnergyTechStocks.com Special Report, we look at five events investors would be wise to plan for as best as they can. None are certain to happen, but warning signs are there.

Shock #2 – As food joins oil in becoming increasingly scarce commodities, major food-exporting countries join together in OPEC-style cartels that threaten global trade and more stomach-wrenching price increases even for the developed world.

Two weeks ago a news story out of Thailand that went virtually unnoticed in the West reported that the chairman of CP Group, the world’s biggest rice exporter, wanted his home country to link up with three other major rice producing countries – China, Vietnam and India – to form an OPEC-style cartel in order to raise prices by effectively controlling access to the world’s most vital food source. Last week another unnoticed story reported that the governments of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar have agreed in principle to create the Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC).

How other news media could have ignored this anything-but-veiled threat to the global economy is difficult to understand. It’s a clear warning sign that you don’t have to be a crazy Middle East ruler who hates the West to want to rule a world that’s getting harder to feed and to transport.

Whether or not this rice cartel is successful, its creation may shake global commodity and stock markets, as it becomes increasingly clear that a world short on food and fuel is susceptible to OPEC-style price- and supply-rigging cartels. Free world trade could become endangered as cartels do bilateral deals, say, rice for oil.

Investors would get hurt, but they also might benefit through exposure to major Western agribusinesses that would likely benefit from cartel-driven price increases. Shares of companies such as Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland might suddenly be in great demand.