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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