• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 3 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 2 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 4 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 4 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 5 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 16 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)
Irina Slav

Irina Slav

Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

More Info

Premium Content

Oil Traders, Supermajors Diverge On Demand Forecasts

The world’s oil supermajors and largest oil trading companies are not in agreement on the future trends in oil demand, a recent event has revealed. This, although normal, should serve as a signal to everyone watching the oil industry that any forecasts on supply and demand, regardless how bullish or bearish they are, need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Or two.

It wasn’t always this way. Once, oil demand was something certain to grow consistently, as there were no alternatives to fossil fuels. Now there are a growing number of these and some industry players are beginning to acknowledge their effect on oil’s fundamentals.

BP was the first to do so: in its latest Energy Outlook, the supermajor forecast that oil demand will peak some time in the next decade. The company noted in the report that “the continuing rapid growth of renewables is leading to the most diversified fuel mix ever seen,” adding that “Abundant and diversified energy supplies will make for a challenging marketplace.”

Different companies are responding to this challenge in different ways. Shell, for instance, is pushing into renewables at breakneck speed. BHP Billiton, on the other hand, is exiting shale oil (under pressure from Elliot Management, but an exit is an exit) and looking for quick-return projects. Exxon is still an oil bull, forecasting that oil demand will continue to grow until 2040 driven by the transport sector and the chemicals industry. Related: Trump Bans Venezuela’s Oil-Backed Cryptocurrency

But Exxon and other oil bulls may be underestimating the changes that the energy sector is already undergoing. That’s according to the chief executive of Gunvor. At the FT Commodities Global Summit in Switzerland, Torbjorn Tornqvist, said "I think that generally the oil industry has underestimated the challenges ahead. I think that electric vehicles are just the beginning, the advances create momentum which feeds that's momentum and accelerates it."

BHP’s Andrew Mackenzie is among those who are aware of these challenges, hence the focus on quick-return projects as “There have to be some questions on electrification as to what that will do to demand for oil from 2030-40 onwards.”

Yet not everyone is convinced that EVs and renewables are such a threat. Tornqvist himself noted that the challenge that EVs and renewable power generation represent would depend on regulatory factors rather than economic considerations. Trafigura’s chief executive, Jeremy Weir, is also not impressed by EV penetration projections, projecting that oil demand will continue to grow until at least 2035. Related: Saudi Crown Prince: Oil Markets Are Close To Regaining Stability

This uncertainty about the future of oil demand, S&P Platts’ Robert Perkins reports, is already affecting investment decisions, as evidenced by BHP’s new strategy in oil, and not all of these decisions will turn out to be the best ones. Of course, uncertainty is a constant companion of decision-makers in any industry, but in energy, it has been heightened significantly by the advent of renewables and electric vehicles.

There is a veritable race for more efficient, cheaper, greener solutions for every single segment of the energy. Given the sheer amount of innovation that is going on across the world with the ultimate aim to dethrone oil as the king of energy, chances are that the challenges for the oil and gas industry are indeed significant. The sooner everyone acknowledges them, the better.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

ADVERTISEMENT

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Bill Simpson on March 31 2018 said:
    Oil demand won't peak for decades. It may never peak because it has so many uses and contains so much potential energy, and chemical building blocks. How are we going to replace that?
    We can't even pave roads without using an oil product, asphalt.
    Think how many trillion batteries you would need to replace the energy in 100 million barrels of oil consumed each DAY. Good luck finding the needed elements to make trillions of batteries.
    Without horizontal drilling and fracking, the economy would be in serious crisis already due to oil costing well over $100 a barrel, and rising.
    Solar and wind together make up about 1.6% of the energy we use. They provide virtually none of the energy consumed in all transportation. Try surviving without transportation. You can't.
    People will still be searching for oil in the next century.

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News