Oil markets are positioned for yet another wild ride. With academic and Wall Street analysts predicting prices of anywhere ranging from $40 to $70 per barrel by the end of the year, oil is looking far more handsome to investors. Over the last two and a half years, the industry experienced its deepest downtown since the 1990s. When using the past as a guide, after every oil bust comes a significant recovery, if not a market boom. With much volatility surrounding pricing numbers alone, analysts and the public seem to only focus on the cost of the everyday essential commodity. This almost myopic focus leaves one resounding question unanswered: what is the future of oil demand?
According to the World Petroleum Council, Oil is one of the most important raw materials humans have access to on this planet. Every day, hundreds of goods and services are used that are either sourced from or contingent upon oil and gas. Thus, it comes as no surprise that oil and gas are also important due to the large number of jobs they provide. According to Economics Online, in 2016, the United States produced an average of approximately 8.9 million barrels of crude oil per day, which means about $3.9 million a day for U.S. citizens. A total of 7.21 billion barrels of petroleum products were consumed that same year, reflecting significant demand for the resource.
One of the most basic, yet most important economic principles is the law of demand. This edict states that, if all alternative factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less the demand for that good will be. Essentially, the higher the price, the lower the quantity demanded. With demand increasing in the advanced OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) economies, which comprise approximately 66 percent of total global demand, one could consider the implications of the recent upturn in oil market prices. Between 1980 and 2008, world oil demand increased by 40 percent, from 60 million barrels per day to over 85 million barrels, Forbes reported.
According to the Industry Tends section of PwC’s Strategy&, recent oil price cans can be attributed to a rebalancing of supply and demand fundamentals, which were accelerated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) recent decision to cut production. Wall Street and academic analysts vocalized confidence that these price gains are expected to remain in place. According to Barclay’s latest E&P Spending Survey, oil and gas industry capital expenditures are anticipated to increase by up to seven percent by the end of 2017. Additionally, global rig counts, particularly in the United States, have been quickly on the rise since the middle of 2016, stated Baker Hughes, one of the world’s largest oil field service companies.
Yet, when delving deeper in the background surrounding demand for oil, it is evident that the demand for the resource has historically been relatively inelastic with respect to price in, given that oil has very few direct substitutes. Contrastingly, however, an obvious problem when predicting the effects of oil-price movements is that the decrease in global price could result from either an increase in global supply or decrease in global demand.
It is important to note that with a significant portion of the global economy flowing through oil, if the demand were to shift, the world power balance would follow suit. While a great deal of activity in the oil and gas sector is focused on OPEC countries and the U.S., other regions will likely play key roles in the coming years. To illustrate, the investment environment in Latin America is rapidly improving. Some domestic oil and gas industries are on an upswing, stimulating and creating jobs.
An excellent example of this is Mexico, where energy reform is currently opening the door for more nontraditional oil and gas operators to establish a presence in the country. Companies successfully bidding for acreage in the recent Deepwater auction in that country include China’s Offshore Oil Corporation, France’s Total, Australia’s BHP Billiton, Japan’s Index, and American firms Chevron and ExxonMobil, cited PwC. The geographical variation of the countries vying to get involved show just how significant oil is to the global economy.
Several countries’ economies are regarded as petroleum economies based on oil, meaning the majority of their economic success is contingent upon the success of oil. Unlike other countries, which largely finance their governments through taxation, petro-states rely on their oil and gas revenues. To provide an idea of which economies rely most heavily on oil as an export, the World Bank released data showing oil revenue as a share of each countries’ GDP. Saudi Arabia ranked third, after Libya and Kuwait, with roughly 45 percent of its GDP dependent upon oil. In terms of government income, Russia obtains about 50 percent through oil and gas, Nigeria receives a more impressive 60 percent, and Saudi Arabia weighs in at a whopping 90 percent.
Countries where fuel accounts for more than 90 percent of total exports include Venezuela, Libya, Sudan, Kuwait, Iraq, Bruni Darussalam, Algeria and Azerbaijan. Therefore, if a demand shift were to occur driving down oil prices, the petroleum-reliant economies would suffer. Additionally, if oil demand were to decrease, the countries that currently import oil would be forced to reallocate money locally. This would benefit individual country economies, but damage the global economy and international trade.
Prior to 2014, when oil was selling at approximately $100 per barrel or above, petro-state countries were able to finance lavish government projects and social welfare operations, securing widespread popular support. With oil prices dancing around a $50 per barrel value, petro-state countries find themselves curbing public spending and forced to fend off rising domestic unhappiness and even incipient revolts.
At the peak of their glory, the petro-states played a colossal role in world affairs. I 2013, members of OPEC earned an estimated $821 billion from oil exports alone. With the corresponding influx of capital, these countries were able to exercise influence over other countries through a wide variety of aid and patronage operations. For example, The Nation discussed how Venezuela sought to counter U.S. influence in Latin America through its Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which is a cooperative network of mostly left-leaning governments. Additionally, Saudi Arabia spread its influence throughout the Islamic world by financing efforts of its ultra-conservative Wahhabi clergy to establish madrassas, or religious academies. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia used prodigious oil wealth to rebuild and refurbish its military which had largely deteriorated following the collapse of the soviet union.
That influential dominance was then, of course, and this is now. While the power of these countries still matter, what currently worries their presidents and prime ministers is the increasing likelihood of civil violence or state collapse. According the The Nation, internal strife and civil disorder are likely in oil-producing states like Algeria and Nigeria, where the potential for growth in terrorist violence during times of chaos is always high.
Now that the past and present of oil demand has been established, it is important to consider what is driving the change. Petroleum is used primarily for transportation and has held more than 90 percent of the transportation market for the past 60 years. According to Forbes, to this date, there have been no scalable economic competitors in the transportation space.
During the second half of the last decade, however, biofuels made a competitive push in the U.S. as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandated increased ethanol in the gasoline supply. This resulted in a one million barrel per day (bpd) global increase in biofuel consumption, which was a scarce drop in the bucket compared to the nearly seven million barrel a day increase in crude oil consumption during that same timeframe. Therefore, despite numerous claims that biofuels would essentially “kill” the crude oil industry, the demand growth for crude oil has been resoundingly consisted, rising by an average of one million bpd for over 30 years.
In February of 2016, Bloomberg published an article on electric vehicles (EVs) that made many similar arguments to the biofuel proponents that were being exercised over the last decade. The article, titled, “Another Oil Crash Is Coming, and There May Be No Recovery,” urged oil investors to “start taking electric cars seriously.” One side of the electric car argument is to encourage individuals to buy electric and reduce their overall environmental footprint. The devil’s advocate may argue that encouraging more people to purchase electric cars may drive them away from public transportation, like buses and trains, and may ironically aggravate environmental problems and cause traffic jams.
Yet, what would happen if public transportation too moved into the electronic sector? Demand for oil would plummet if the major “gas guzzlers” that enable efficient public transportation relied solely on electricity to run, which would throw off the entire oil-market dominance in the global economy. With areas like China, India, European Countries and even the state of California implementing policy changes to move away from gas-run transportation, this shift may be a more realistic reality than many analysts anticipate.
So, where will demand for crude oil go? There are a number of determining factors waiting in the wings, ready for their big moment. Only time will tell which factor will outperform them all.
Works Cited
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