PEAK OIL - EPOCHAL EVENT OF OUR LIVES

[HowardHughs]

Paradigm shift from Peak Oil to Peak Oil Demand?

"Get Ready for Peak Oil Demand" By Lynn Cook and Elena Cherney

Updated May 26, 2017
https://www.wsj.com/articles/get-ready-for-peak-oil-demand-1495419061

"The world’s largest oil companies are girding for the biggest shift in energy consumption since the Industrial Revolution: After decades of growth, global demand for oil is poised to peak and fall in the coming years.

"New technologies that improve fuel efficiency are starting to push down the amount of gasoline and diesel that’s needed for transportation, and a consensus is growing that fuel demand for passenger cars could fall as carbon rules go into effect, electric vehicles gain traction and the internal combustion engine gets re-engineered to be dramatically more efficient. Western countries’ growth used to move in lockstep with their energy consumption, but that phenomenon is starting to decouple in advanced economies."

..."some big European producers predict that a peak could emerge as soon as 2025 or 2030, and they are overhauling their long-term investment plans to diversify away from crude oil. Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Norway’s Statoil SA are placing bigger bets on natural gas and renewables, including wind and solar."

"The idea that electric vehicles and alternative forms of energy will increasingly displace crude oil is one that big-name investors are starting to ask about."

“We have lots of clients in the financial sector asking about peak demand,” says Linda Giesecke, research director at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. “It’s because you have this threat of disruptive technology” such as electric vehicles, she says. “If it is disruptive, it will come fast. That’s why it’s so hard to forecast.”

"Historically, producing crude oil has been a growth industry, if a cyclical one, with energy demand moving in step with economic output. Since 1965, global oil consumption has increased from 30 million barrels a day to nearly 95 million.

"During those decades, companies built strategic plans around the assumption that they would always need to find more oil, and analysts obsessed over whether there would be enough crude in the ground to fuel growth. When oil hit its high over $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, some of the run-up was fueled by concern about hitting maximum output, or so-called peak oil, the point at which normal declines in output from producing oil fields outpace the industry’s ability to develop new supply.

"New perspective
Now, peak-oil theory has been turned on its head, and forecasting peak demand has taken center stage.

"Some companies, particularly European energy outfits, see the tipping point coming soon enough that they are talking about it publicly, and overhauling their long-term investment plans to accommodate a greater emphasis on natural gas and renewables. Shell and Statoil say peak oil demand could come as soon as the mid-2020s"

"Outside of efficiency gains, which even peak-demand naysayers acknowledge are coming, the biggest “X” factor is how widespread electric-vehicle adoption will be. Transport fuel accounts for about 50% of the demand for crude oil, with cars accounting for half of that; that means 25% of total oil demand hinges on autos."

"Statoil Chief Economist Eirik Wærness says expectations of higher electric-vehicle adoption are the main reason that his company’s peak-demand forecast of 2030 is earlier than BP’s. Statoil has shifted its long-term investment portfolio to reflect its forecast of demand peaking around 2030."

..."policies around the world stand to have a major impact on the fuel mix. Globally, carbon intensity and energy intensity have already peaked and will trend down through 2035, according to a Wood Mackenzie analysis. But many analysts say the Paris Agreement to limit global warming is just the beginning. And some companies are starting to plan accordingly.

“To us, it’s real,” says Statoil’s Mr. Sætre. “The future has to be low carbon.”
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"Will oil demand start to fall in ten years?" By Luca Longo
https://www.eniday.com/en/technology_en/oil-demand-fall

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"HOUSTON — The world's demand for oil could peak as soon as 2025 if nations keep to a global deal curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Royal Dutch Shell ..."
https://www.axios.com/shell-ceo-climate-deal-oil-demand-peak-7-years-4d2ff0d6-0940-411c-9479-aacfd0ea824f.html

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Wed 30 May 2018 "Electric vehicles will grow from 3 million to 125 million by 2030, International Energy Agency forecasts"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/electric-vehicles-will-grow-from-3-million-to-125-million-by-2030-iea.html