Energy market madness is the death spasm of the oil age – renewables now!
Current oil price volatility is a symptom of the end of cheap oil, writes Nafeez Ahmed, and it’s destablising the entire global economy. The answer is a major shift to renewables – but the the International Energy Agency, which should be leading the transition, is in the grip of nuclear and fossil fuel interests. Instead the leadership must come from us, the people!
There is, of course, a way out, and it lies in recognizing the growing efficacy and efficiency of renewable energy sources, especially solar, wind and geothermal.
The market price of oil has dipped below $50 a barrel – an event that few anticipated. So low is this price collapse, that it is endangering the profitability of the entire oil industry.
The immediate cause of the price collapse is the US-Saudistrategy of interfering in the oil market. The duo is using oil prices to wage economic warfare by sustaining unusually high levels of production.
With the global economy still limping along in the context of weak demand and slow growth, the supply glut has tumbled the market price of oil with the precise aim of undercutting the state revenues of US-Saudi mutual geopolitical rivals, especially Russia, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.
Despite the apparent low price of oil on international markets, costs of production remain high. Since the peak of cheap, conventional oil around 2005, production has fluctuated on a plateau as the industry has turned increasingly to more expensive, dirtier and difficult-to-extract forms of unconventional oil and gas, especially shale.
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