Shell Plots Strategies for Post-Oil Demand Peak
There are ongoing parties across most oil producing countries as oil price rebounds. The price has been making remarkable progress since it hit rock-bottom few years ago. That is good for Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and others that depend on hydrocarbons to finance their budgets.
But behind this optimism, the upstream players like Shell who usually plan ahead of time see a redesign: oil peak demand could happen within a decade. Note that I did not say that oil production or the world would run of oil. I said, oil demand might peak within a decade. That is based on internal studies by Shell.
Internal studies by a group of analysts within Shell known as the “scenarios” team had concluded that global demand for oil might peak in as little as a decade—essentially tomorrow in an industry that plans in quarter-century increments
With this insight, Shell plans “to shift its strategy so that it doesn't end up holding too many fossil fuel extraction assets when the world has moved on to renewables". Yes, while we can continue to pump more oil, renewables would offer a clear competition to oil in many industrial applications. As France, China and other nations put deadlines for phasing out fossil-fuel cars, oil demand would correlate accordingly. Simply, demand would fall.
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In a long piece, Nigeria in the Post-Petroleum era, I explained why our nation must work hard to redesign the economy. This Shell observation makes the implementation of those suggestions even more urgent.
