OPEC+ is trying to maintain a price in the face of low demand due to the pandemic.
An overabundance of supplies, a significant slowdown in demand and a sudden drop in oil prices could, in the short term, hide, or even accentuate, the risks weighing on the oil supply in the medium and long terms.
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“At less than $ 40 a barrel,” they write, “it is inconceivable to imagine the future of the energy sector calmly. In the first place, insufficient investments could jeopardize the possibility of ensuring the continuity of oil supply in the medium term. But this also risks delaying, or even failing to commit, funding for short-term low-carbon energies which, if they are not subsidized, will de facto become less attractive for end users drowned in inexpensive fossil fuels.
https://aspofrance.org/2020/07/10/apres ... r-le-choc/The Oughts were instructive because the simple situation outlined PO: high demand, constrained supply, escalating price,
peak conventional, recession.
The teens pretty boring tho they showed just how short our horizons.
The 20s are way more interesting. The situation is anything but simple no matter how the cornies wish it to be "normal":
Pandemic, Red Queen LTO, underlying declines growing, possible overall peak, intentional demand destruction via decarbonization —or not, depending on your party. Partisanship in the US that obliterates any useful dialog about the future because we can't even agree on the outlines of the present.
Could be 18 billion vaccines are shipped tomorrow, the economy comes roaring back, LTO spins back up (there is a sucker born every day), Biden convinces all the trumpers to vote for the Green Deal and jobs and infrastructure and RE all flood our lives with goodness.
Or the vaccine rollout is botched and the pandemic rages on, the economy (≠ the stock market) struggles then crashes when the props are kicked out, low demand bankrupts most LTO and investors figure $40B fracked away with little return is enough, other conventional projects are mothballed hindering medium term replacement and long term development. Biden finds out that, surprise!, trump
was the republican party all along and they would rather die than vote for anything good for anybody because it might help the mob.
3-4-5 years hence as the economy tries to restart we find, oops, not enough supply, couple more years we find, oops, depletion has caught up and not only can't supply grow, but it can't even stay the same.
I feel like the LTO Ponzi pyramid is nearing its comeuppance right about on schedule. I felt but didn't know that it wouldn't be viable elsewhere, it appears not. Nothing new on the conventional front in 15 years. US democracy is teetering, it has abandoned the world and we know about power vacuums. Debt is soaring because our economy is dependant on growth, yet the population isn't growing...
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Oops, got a little doomy here in the middle of winter, I get nervous when I live in town, LOL
Our kids are deploying to the lower 48 next year and we are likely to move near them. We'll also likely build something permanent and be a little self-sufficient by '25 or so.
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)