This is a catastrophe
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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It's a nightmare. No amount of good can unmake this economic demon
This is expected. Oil prize has been on the decline for some time. I didn't expect demand to erode this fast, though. which I guess is kinda a good thing.
The only way forward is for renewables to become even cheaper that fossils. Which can be done. The EUs fit-for-55 will bring down energy prizes. Summertime we will see really low electricity prizes the comming decade in Europe because of this.
remove the subsidies and this should fix itself.
It probably takes more than that; for example, when whale oil become uncompetitive for lighting because kerosene was cheaper, the whalers started turning it into margarine.
That could be fine in the sense that if its not burning it that is better. Although we don't need more plastics for sure.
Fossil fuel has actually pretty high fixed production costs. The best example was Texan oil going negative during covid. So with a fast deployment of renewables replacing fossil fuels, we will see periods of fossil fuels being cheap, as renewables replaced enough of them to see oversupply. However low prices also force production to be cut, partly by companies going bankrupt. Once enough has been cut prices are going up again.
Right now we see a number of OPEC+ countries breaking production limits. Namely Russia, Iraq and Kazakhstan. The Saudis see Iran heading towards a war with Israel and the Saudis want to hurt Iran. So the Saudis threaten increased oil production to hurt Iran's economy. That would also hurt fracking producers in the US, which would also benefit the Saudis.
Such is the nature of market prices, if nobody uses it then the lack of demand drops the price. Eventually it gets low enough to make it not worth extracting and either someone stockpiles it for 'reasons' or it just goes away. Chances are though the vested interests will find some other way to push their product onto the public though.