The oil and gas industry has been in a recession, effectively since the global financial crisis 11 years ago. Each year, production volumes have increased by more than global demand, meaning that the market has been in decline, with lower prices for crude oil and natural gas the natural result.
I came across a very interesting statistic the other day from the IEA’s Renewables 2018 report. The statistic is that 50% of total energy consumption globally is used for the production of heat for our homes, industry, and other applications.
Some years back I visited one of the major automobile manufacturers with some investor clients of mine. We met the CTO of that particular company, who asked us “what is the biggest mistake the automobile industry has made in the last century?” Despite the varied responses from the audience, we were all surprised by his answer: “We never controlled the fuel value chain” and to that he added “and we won’t make the same mistake with electric cars.”
There is a pretty simple truth about oil, and that is that there is lots out there, a fact that is not going to change going forward. In fact, quite the opposite. There is probably more upside to production, as well as downside on the demand side, meaning we will likely see low oil prices for the foreseeable future. The likelihood is that we will also see a race to the bottom in terms of the oil price as producers try to pump oil out of the ground and bring it to market as fast as possible. This in turn will lead to stranded assets as oil companies write down high-cost resources which have become too expensive to take out of the ground.
