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The ratio of discovered resources versus demand has dropped in recent decades and is now at around 25%.
Oxy CEO Hollub: “2025 and beyond is when the world is going to be short of oil.”.
Oil industry executives have been warning that new resources, new investments, and new supply will be needed just to maintain the current supply levels as older fields mature.

The world would find itself short of oil from 2025 onwards as exploration for longer-producing crude reserves is set to lag demand growth, Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, said at the Davos forum on Tuesday.

For most of the second half of the 20^th century, oil companies were finding more crude than global consumption, around five times the demand volumes, Hollub said, as carried by Reuters.

The ratio of discovered resources versus demand has dropped in recent decades and is now at around 25%.

“In the near term, the markets are not balanced; supply, demand is not balanced,” Oxy’s CEO said.

“2025 and beyond is when the world is going to be short of oil.”

According to the executive, the oil market will find itself moving from an oversupply in the near term to a long period of supply shortages.

Oil industry executives have been warning that new resources, new investments, and new supply will be needed just to maintain the current supply levels as older fields mature.

One of the most persistent warnings has come for years from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, and its state oil giant Aramco.

The Kingdom and Aramco have repeatedly said that the focus of the energy sector and the debates on the energy transition should be on how to cut emissions, not on reducing oil and gas production.

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The Harsh Truth: We’re Using More Oil Than Ever

November 25, 2023

The Harsh Truth: We’re Using More Oil Than Ever

In this age of climate crisis, the world is consuming more crude than ever. Peak oil demand? Not yet. Maybe one day, perhaps even soon, around 2030. For now, however, the global economy still runs on oil.

It will take a while before governments certify it, but every piece of data points in the very same direction: In the past few weeks, global oil demand has surpassed the monthly peak set in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.Expressed in barrels a day, the fresh record high in global oil consumption totals about 102.5 million, likely hit in the last few weeks in July and above the 102.3 million of August 2019. Picture this: We use enough crude to fill about 6,500 Olympic-size swimming pools every day. More than a third of those swimming pools would be needed to quench the thirst of two countries: the US and China.

It’s not unexpected. The International Energy Agency, which compiles benchmark supply and demand statistics, has anticipated it for months. It was just a question of timing, since oil demand surges during the northern hemisphere summer, when millions of European and American families guzzle gasoline and jet fuel during their holidays. The wholesale cost of refined products, such as gasoline, is surging too.

Granted, the new demand milestone is just one flimsy data point. Global oil consumption statistics are routinely revised, and a final figure probably won’t be set in stone until next year, or even 2025. The margin of error is relatively wide, too, probably at least 1 million barrels a day. But experience indicates that demand is typically revised higher, rather than lower.

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China’s Oil Demand Is Set To Hit A Record High In 2023

January 13, 2023

China’s Oil Demand Is Set To Hit A Record High In 2023

China’s oil demand is expected to hit a record high 16 million bpd this year, an increase of 800,000 bpd.
Having lifted its zero-Covid policy, China is currently suffering through an exit wave of Covid but should recover in the second quarter.
China is preparing for its reopening already, with the government issuing a huge batch of oil import quotas for its private refiners.

China’s oil consumption is expected to jump by 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year to a record 16 million bpd, after Beijing abandoned the strict ‘zero Covid’ policy and re-opened its borders, a median estimate of 11 China-focused consultants polled by Bloomberg News showed.

Following the initial exit Covid wave after the strictest curbs were lifted, Chinese oil demand is set to rebound from the second quarter onwards, also raising global oil demand for this year, many analysts say.

Despite the fact that China’s crude oil imports in 2022 were slightly lower than the previous year, for a second consecutive year, crude imports in December rose by 4% annually for the third highest monthly purchases in 2022, data showed on Friday.

Despite the current Covid wave, China is preparing for the re-opening with the issuance of a huge batch of oil import quotas for its private refiners.

“Higher quotas support the view of recovering Chinese demand this year and the quicker-than-expected change in Covid policy means that the demand recovery could be more robust than initially expected,” ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said this week.

Global oil demand in 2023 is expected to grow by around 1.7 million bpd, of which 50% will be driven by China, according to ING, which says “There could be some upside risk to this” forecast.

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Andurand: Oil Prices Could Exceed $140 If China’s Economy Fully Reopens

January 10, 2023

Andurand: Oil Prices Could Exceed $140 If China’s Economy Fully Reopens

Hedge fund manager Andurand: full reopening of Chinese economy could send oil prices past $140 per barrel.
Andurand: The market is underestimating the scale of the demand boost.
Andurand did say last week that oil demand will be limited somewhat by a growth in the EV sector.

Crude oil prices could exceed $140 per barrel yet this year if China’s economy fully reopens, hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand said on Friday.

Andurand sees the possibility of crude oil demand growing by more than 4 million barrels per day this year—a 4% increase over last year. This far exceeds crude demand growth set out for 2023 by other oil market forecasters.

“I think oil will go upwards of $140 a barrel once Asia fully reopens, assuming there will be no more lockdowns, Andurand said, adding that the “market is underestimating the scale of the demand boost that it will bring.”

Andurand’s forecast goes against the trend that crude oil prices set so far this year. During the first week of the year, crude oil prices tumbled by 9% in the first two trading days in what was the worst start to a year since 1991.

Last week, Andurand said in a tweet that oil demand could increase between 3 and 4 million bpd this year, aided by the switch from oil to gas.

China’s reopening has been on the oil industry’s radar ever since it employed its zero-covid policies and locked down much of its economy. China only recently made significant changes to its covid policies, abandoning its strict measures in favor of relaxed testing requirements and travel restrictions. But China’s reopening has been plagued with a new wave of Covid, spooking many oil bulls off what would be their rejoicing at what should be a significant bump in demand.

Andurand did say last week that oil demand will be limited somewhat by a growth in the EV sector, as EVs have the potential to displace 600,000 bpd of oil demand.

An Oil Supply Shock May Be Imminent

September 28, 2022

An Oil Supply Shock May Be Imminent

Oil demand has remained resilient in the face of a multitude of challenges.
OPEC+ has fallen behind more than 3.5 million bpd on its output goals.
The DoE has no immediate plans to start refilling the SPR.
The risk of a supply shock grows as China’s economy re-opens while Russian oil is being forced off the market.

When the chief executive of Aramco said earlier this week that years of underinvestment had damaged the balance between supply and demand in the oil market, it should have been a wake-up call to those in decision-making positions. Instead, the secretary-general of the UN bashed the oil industry once again for “feasting” on record-high profits and urged governments to make them pay for this.

Meanwhile, OPEC’s production shortfall last month reached 3.58 million bpd—a figure equal to some 3.5 percent of global demand—and the United States continued to sell oil from its strategic petroleum reserve.

These seemingly unrelated news reports do have something very important in common. Both clearly suggest a supply shortfall on a global level is imminent. Throw in the news that Russia’s oil exports could fall by some 2.4 million bpd after the EU embargo enters into effect in December, and an oil shortage becomes more or less unavoidable.

Oil demand has remained resilient in the face of a multitude of challenges, and even prices of over $100 per barrel failed to curb it in any significant way earlier this year. Now, prices are somewhat tempered, but the embargo is still about two months away. Once this kicks in, prices are bound to jump because alternative supply is limited. And the U.S. will need to start refilling its SPR at some point because it is getting depleted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Paradigm Shift: End of the Oil Age

August 16, 2022

PARADIGM SHIFT: END OF THE OIL AGE

The world thinks it’s in an energy crisis today and indeed there are shortages in some places but the world is undergoing an energy crisis more fundamental than the simple shortage happening today in Europe. A shortage can be remedied.

The larger problem is that oil use began to decline from 48% of total world energy consumption after 1977 (Figure 1). This was the beginning of the end of the oil age.

Figure 1. The end of the oil age began with the price shocks of the 1970s. Oil consumption has fallen from 48% to 36% of total energy use since 1977. Source: EIA, BLS & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Per-capita oil consumption has been flat since since 1985 (Figure 2). That means that individual worker productivity is not growing as it did before the oil shocks.

Figure 2. World per-capita oil consumption reached a peak in 1978 and has been on an undulating plateau since 1985. Source: EIA,FRED, OWID, BP & Labyrinth Consulting Services.

The world thinks that an energy transition is underway but fails to understand that transitions are additive. The relative percent of fuels changes but volumes rarely decrease. The world uses, for example, as much biomass today as in 1800 (Figure 3). Nor is there any likelihood that this transition will take 30 years instead of the century or longer period for earlier transitions.

Figure 3. Energy transitions are additive. The relative percent of fuels changes but volumes rarely decrease. The world uses as much biomass today as in 1800. Source: EIA, BP, IEA, FRED, OWWD, World Bank & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

The real crisis today is that oil is the economy. The oil age has been ending for 50 years but there is no substitute for oil. Wind, solar and nuclear only address electric power generation which accounts for only 18% of world energy consumption…

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Saudi Aramco to increase oil production to meet global demand

March 21, 2022

Saudi Aramco to increase oil production to meet global demand

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company said it would increase spending on oil production to meet rising global demand, as it reported a doubling of profits in 2021. Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/ReutersSaudi Aramco – the world’s largest oil exporter and one of the world’s most profitable companies – said its net profit increased by 124% to $110bn (£83bn) in 2021, compared with $49bn a year earlier.

The company said its profits had soared as a result of higher crude oil prices as demand for oil rebounded after the pandemic, and also because of increased margins for its refining and chemicals business.

Brent crude oil rocketed to $139 a barrel, a 14-year high, earlier this month but have since dropped to closer to $100. In early December, a barrel of crude was priced below $70.

Aramco expects demand for oil to keep climbing, and said “substantial new investment” is required to meet this demand, in a move likely to dismay climate campaigners.

It said it is increasing its capital expenditure for 2022 by about half to between $40 and $50bn, with further growth expected until the middle of the decade.

The state-owned oil firm’s capital expenditure came in just below $32bn in 2021, an 18% increase from 2020.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been asked in recent days by western governments to pump more oil to replace reliance on supplies from Russia.

The Gulf countries are the only two leading oil producers that have immediate spare capacity able to offset the shortfall in Russian-produced energy. However, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a recent report that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are so far “showing no willingness to tap into reserves”.

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IEA calls for driving restrictions and air travel curbs to reduce oil demand

March 19, 2022

IEA calls for driving restrictions and air travel curbs to reduce oil demand

Energy agency warns 2.5mn barrels a day of Russian oil exports could cease from next month

The International Energy Agency has called for member countries to adopt “emergency measures” to cut oil demand in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including driving restrictions, lower speed limits and curbs on air travel.

Fatih Birol, head of the energy watchdog, on Friday warned that such steps might be necessary because “oil markets are in an emergency situation . . . and it may get worse”.

As much as 2.5mn barrels a day of Russian oil exports could cease from next month due to the impact of the war and consumer boycotts of Russian crude, he said. Russia is one of the world’s largest oil producers. The IEA has proposed 10 measures to reduce oil demand by 2.7m b/d within the next four months, which it said would help balance potential loss from the Russian market. “As a result of Russia’s appalling aggression against Ukraine, the world may well be facing its biggest oil supply shock in decades,” Birol said. He urged IEA member countries — which include many of the world’s largest energy consumers such as the US, Japan and Germany — to cut demand now, “to avoid the risk of a crippling oil crunch”.

The measures include cutting speed limits on highways by 10kph, which would save 430,000 b/d, reducing business air travel and taking trains instead of planes where possible.

Working from home three days a week would also help cut oil demand, along with making public transport cheaper or even free. Many of the proposals would cut down on driving, including banning private cars from cities on Sundays and limiting private car access to roads in large cities.

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Oil Producers Aren’t Keeping Up With Demand, Causing Prices to Stay High

January 14, 2022

Oil Producers Aren’t Keeping Up With Demand, Causing Prices to Stay High

OPEC Plus, the United States and others have been slow to ramp up output, lagging production goals.

Credit…Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Nearly two years ago the world’s oil producers slammed on the brakes and drastically cut production as the pandemic gripped the world’s economies. The sharp pullback came with an implicit promise that as factories reopened and planes returned to the air, the oil industry would revive, too, gradually scaling up production to help economies return to prepandemic health.

It isn’t exactly turning out that way. Oil producers are finding it harder than expected to ramp up output. Members of the cartel OPEC Plus, which agreed to cut output by about 10 million barrels a day in early 2020, are routinely falling well short of their rising monthly production targets.

“In a lot of places, once output has been reduced, it is not easy to bring it back,” said Richard Bronze, the head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a London-based research firm.

Production in the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, has also been slow to recover from its one-million-barrel-a-day plummet in 2020, as companies and investors are wary of committing money amid climate change concerns and volatile prices. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. crude output in 2022, while rising, is likely to average half a million barrels a day below 2019 levels.

This global pattern of lagging production has helped push oil prices to seven-year highs, stoking inflation, which has become a political issue in the United States and elsewhere. Brent crude, the international standard, is close to $84 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, is selling for close to $82.

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Energy demand rises, challenging climate goals

January 13, 2022

Energy demand rises, challenging climate goals

Rebound to push oil appetite above pre-pandemic levels, Moody’s says

iStockphoto.com / baona

Despite new government commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel demand is set to surpass pre-pandemic levels, says Moody’s Investors Service.

In a new report, the rating agency said it expects demand for energy to continue its recovery in 2022, with strong consumer appetite for gasoline and resurgent international travel driving an increase in demand for oil that is predicted to exceed its pre-pandemic mark.

This resurgence in fossil fuel demand is running up against efforts to combat climate change by curbing emissions, the report noted.

“New COP-26 commitments provide momentum for accelerated decarbonization, but increased demand for oil and natural gas poses a stubborn impediment to progress,” it said.

In turn, this could could drive greater policy action, the report suggested, as increased emissions due to rising oil consumption “will likely lead to added investor pressure for oil companies to transition their businesses, and to inspire more policy initiatives to cut oil and gas demand.”

Moody’s said that the oil and gas industry’s efforts to combat emissions will include switching to renewable energy, along with “a new focus on developing technologies to generate low-carbon energy sources.”

“Companies are exploring technologies to generate less carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and technologies that offset [emissions],” it said. “But the commercial viability of even the most promising low-carbon technologies appears uncertain without regulatory support or subsidies.”

In the meantime, the strong demand for energy and uncertainty about the prospect of expanding supply will keep prices high, Moody’s said.

It expects oil prices to remain at the high end of its medium-term range of US$50-US$70/barrel, and that natural gas prices will stay high too, “as the global industry resolves significant ongoing dislocations.”

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World Economy Entering Period of Oil Scarcity, Halliburton CEO Says

December 11, 2021

An oil worker removes a thread cap from a piece of drill pipe on a drilling lease owned by Elevation Resources near Midland, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2019. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

World Economy Entering Period of Oil Scarcity, Halliburton CEO Says

Jeff Miller warns that global oil supply could soon be surpassed by demand for the indefinite future

Halliburton CEO and president Jeff Miller made waves on Monday predicting that the world is due for a period of oil scarcity in comments at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas.

“I think that for the first time in a long time, we will see a buyer looking for a barrel of oil, as opposed to a barrel of oil looking for a buyer,” Miller said.

Since 2014, the oil industry has generally deemphasized building new infrastructure in the face of low prices. However, that trend may now catch up with the industry, which now finds demand for oil exceeding the available supply given current infrastructure.

Some analysts have speculated that it is increasingly likely that oil prices will soon climb to $100 per barrel, a price unseen in the past seven years and which has serious potential to disrupt the economy.

An additional factor contributing to predicted oil scarcity is a labor shortage in the fossil fuel industry surpassing that in the general economy.

The widespread perception that fossil fuels will be marginalized in the future of energy and transportation makes long-term careers in petroleum unattractive to young workers, with many oil workers seeking to switch to renewables or leave the energy industry outright.

A recent survey revealed that 43 percent of oil industry employees sought to transition to other sectors in the next five years, as reported by Reuters.

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Running Out of Spare Capacity

December 6, 2021

Running Out of Spare Capacity

Global oil markets could not have looked grimmer than back in the summer of 2020. COVID cases were increasing again and further global economic lockdowns were being threatened. Only two months before, oil prices had crashed into negative territory for the first time in history as global inventories had surged and threatened to overflow. Between the never-ending pandemic and electric vehicles, common investment wisdom believed oil demand was in secular decline, bloated inventories would remain elevated forever, and oil prices would never recover.

At Goehring & Rozencwajg, we love to undertake in-depth insightful research that identifies newly developing investment trends and often comes up with conclusions that differ vastly from consensus opinion. Our goal is to share these results with our investment clients and partners at least twelve months before they become headline news in the financial press. This is an ambitious goal and we don’t always get it right. However, the satisfaction in recognizing trends long before the general investment community not only brings large profits to our investors, but a huge amount of professional pleasure to us as well.

To that end, we titled our 2Q2020 letter “On the Verge of an Energy Crisis”. At the time, no one agreed with us. Now headline after headline talks of an “unforeseen” energy panic. It looks like the energy crisis we discussed 14 months ago is now here.

If the energy crisis has arrived, where does Goehring & Rozencwajg see things 12 months from now? By the end of 2022, we believe global oil demand will have exceeded pumping capability for the first time in history. Just as no one agreed with our assessment of an emerging energy crisis this time last year, almost no one agrees us today either. Instead, conventional wisdom strongly believes OPEC spare capacity will be returned, eventually throwing the market into huge surplus in 2022.

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365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

November 25, 2021

365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

Too much demand causes oil prices to rise to an unsustainable level, leading to the oil market’s collapse.

This is another topic, like eutrophication, which is not specifically part of the global warming problem, but it is of direct importance to society and to our use of petroleum. Peak oil theory states that, since petroleum is a finite resource, while humanity is not in imminent danger of running out of recoverable oil, the remaining oil will be increasingly hard to obtain, requiring more time and resources, becoming a less efficient process which is increasingly not beneficial to the economy or humanity.

***

In 1956 Marion King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil, was commissioned to report on future oil recovery in the United States. After a statistical study of all available oil field data, Hubbert developed a bell-curve model for conventional crude oil production predicting a peak in the early 1970’s. In fact conventional oil—wells drilled on land, without the application of advanced recovery techniques—peaked slightly before Hubbert’s prediction, topping out at 9.5 million barrels per day (mmbd). Similarly detailed information is not available for oil fields in other countries—Saudi Arabia is not about to give out detailed information about production and reserves, which would compromise its geopolitical strength, for example—so similarly detailed predictions cannot be made for the planet as a whole.

Furthermore, unconventional oil production has increasingly come to dominate the market, with offshore and fracked wells leading to new peaks in production, notably in the United States (which currently leads the world in crude oil production at slightly over 10.5 mmbd). So what to make of a theory which was correct on its initial terms—predicting maximum onshore oil production in the United States—but avoided predictions for the markets which developed later, and have led to later, higher production?

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OPEC+ Reportedly Threatening Response To Global Coordinated SPR Release

November 22, 2021

OPEC+ Reportedly Threatening Response To Global Coordinated SPR Release

In an apparent ‘threat’ response to headlines suggesting the Biden administration is attempting to coordinate a global SPR release to push down oil prices (and following reports from Japanese media that the government is preparing to release crude from its strategic stockpiles), the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum said OPEC+ may change its plan for raising oil output if consuming nations sell petroleum reserves or the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

“I anticipate OPEC+ energy ministers will maintain their current plan of adding more supplies to the market gradually,” IEF Secretary-General Joseph McMonigle said in a statement Monday after a meeting with a Japanese foreign ministry official about recent volatility in energy markets.

“However, certain unforeseen external factors such as a release of strategic reserves or new lockdowns in Europe may prompt a reassessment of market conditions.”

Critically, this confirms much of what we have written about how any coordinated SPR release (however unlikely that is in and of itself) that any increase in supply will be met by action from OPEC+ moving to not hike outputs as previously planned – thus perhaps helping prices in the short-term, but raising them longer-term.

For now, oil traders are undecided at what this news means…

For now we expect gas prices to drop in the short-term as the lag in the supply-chain from crude to the pump implies some built-in reduction…

But, if OPEC+’s threat response plays out with higher prices, those lower gas prices will prove ‘transitory’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BP: Oil Demand Has Already Topped 100 Million Bpd

November 2, 2021

BP: Oil Demand Has Already Topped 100 Million Bpd

BP: Global oil demand has already exceeded the threshold of 100 million barrels per day
Demand will continue to increase and reach pre-COVID levels at some point in 2022

Global oil demand has already exceeded the threshold of 100 million barrels per day (bpd) last seen before the pandemic, supermajor BP estimates.

Demand will continue to increase and reach pre-COVID levels at some point in 2022, BP’s chief financial officer Murray Auchincloss said on Tuesday at a conference call following the release of the Q3 results.

“Somewhere next year we will be above pre-Covid levels,” Auchincloss said on the call, as carried by Bloomberg.

“OPEC+ is doing a good job managing the balance, so we remain constructive on oil prices,” BP’s CFO added on the call about BP’s third-quarter results, which beat analyst estimates.

Brent Crude prices rose by 7 percent to average $74 per barrel in the third quarter and moved above $80 per barrel in recent weeks, Auchincloss said at the Q3 results presentation.

“This reflects the strong rebound in oil demand as the impact of COVID eases as well as the measured increases in OPEC+ supply. As a result, inventories have reduced back toward pre-pandemic levels. As we look ahead to the end of the year, we expect oil prices to be supported by continued inventory draw-down, with the potential for additional demand from gas to oil switching,” BP’s executive added.

BP’s view about global oil demand is generally in line with most analyst and industry estimates pointing to consumption returning to pre-pandemic levels as soon as this quarter or early next year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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