Outrage parade

I have a little confession to make that nobody cares about but I’ll make it anyway. For two weeks now, I’ve been trying to write a post about Europe’s latest gas pains. I keep failing because more interesting things keep cropping up. This week’s no exception, so instead of gas, let’s talk about oil. Oil’s currently making a lot of people livid and this is a wonderful, healthy thing.

There’s so much outrage out there I’m not sure where to begin. The blows just keep coming in increasingly quick succession and they’ve stunned some of the leaders of the transition to such an extent that they’ve started talking about imagination in business decisions. That’s how bad it’s got to be.

Since I mentioned the imagination reference, let’s start with the investment blow. Energy analysts are predicting a surge in deepwater offshore drilling investment, that’s going to rise from $104 billion this year to $140 billion over the next three short years. That’s quite an increase and it might turn out to be too conservative.

The forecast comes from Rystad Energy, which last year predicted offshore drilling will see investments of over $100 billion annually in both 2023 and 2024. And then, it seems, they’ll just keep rising, which is extremely odd in light of all the peak oil demand predictions. I mean, the IEA said oil demand growth will peak around 2027 — just when Big Oil spends a predicted $140 billion on just offshore drilling. Not just that, but one Rystad analyst dared call the 2020s “deepwater’s decade”, which is totally outrageous. Alas, this doesn’t make it any less accurate. Cue the call for more imagination in business.