{"id":29122,"date":"2017-12-23T15:54:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T20:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29122"},"modified":"2017-12-23T15:55:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T20:55:12","slug":"the-top-8-unknowns-in-2018s-energy-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29122","title":{"rendered":"The Top 8 Unknowns In 2018’s Energy Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Top 8 Unknowns In 2018’s Energy Markets<\/a><\/h3>\n\"Refinery\"<\/picture>\n
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It\u2019s that time of year when we flip our calendars to a new start.<\/p>\n

For pundits like me, it\u2019s customary to make a listicle about the year to come \u2013 the usual predictions about things like OPEC, energy consumption, commodity prices and electric vehicle sales in China. But I decided to fold from that no-win game a while back.<\/p>\n

In this age of disruption, there are too many unknowns to honestly predict what will happen next week, let alone 52 of them into the future. So instead of predicting outcomes, I\u2019ve decided to list the top eight unknowns in energy markets for 2018<\/p>\n

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  1. Collateral disruption<\/strong>\u2013 Bringing on energy projects needs a lot of investment. The shakeup of capital markets is inflicting opaque, collateral disruption to the energy business too. Financial technologies are altering fund flows, market liquidity and access to capital. You thought self-driving cars were the only thing that could affect the oil business? How about robo-trading in debt and equity markets? Energy executives now need to be \u2018fintech\u2019 experts too.<\/li>\n
  2. Bitcoin after-effects<\/strong>\u2013 Crypto-currencies like Bitcoin have seemingly little to do with energy, other than using absurd amounts of electricity. But the underlying blockchain technology will be transformative to financing, supplying and consuming primary energy resources. Bitcoin-mania is legitimizing and accelerating blockchain transaction platforms. Be prepared: Yet-to-be-understood changes to the energy business are coming faster than most people think.<\/li>\n
  3. Cartel discipline<\/strong>\u2013 Some have suggested that North American oil companies should join the OPEC cartel. There is no need. Western investors joined OPEC in the second half of 2017 by restricting equity capital to oil producers. A new \u201cshow me your returns, not your production growth\u201d mantra is restraining oil company spending, and therefore the US rig count. But will it be enough to reign in oil output in 2018? And which will crack first when a barrel of WTI oil hits $US 60\/B: Investor discipline or OPEC discipline?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Top 8 Unknowns In 2018’s Energy Markets It\u2019s that time of year when we flip our calendars to a new start. For pundits like me, it\u2019s customary to make a listicle about the year to come \u2013 the usual predictions about things like OPEC, energy consumption, commodity prices and electric vehicle sales in China. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14994,2904,5332,16958],"class_list":["post-29122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-14994","tag-energy-market","tag-oilprice-com","tag-peter-tertzakian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29123,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29122\/revisions\/29123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}