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Power

Oil Companies Are Collapsing, but Wind and Solar Energy Keep Growing (nytimes.com) 217

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A few years ago, the kind of double-digit drop in oil and gas prices the world is experiencing now because of the coronavirus pandemic might have increased the use of fossil fuels and hurt renewable energy sources like wind and solar farms. That is not happening. From a report: In fact, renewable energy sources are set to account for nearly 21 percent of the electricity the United States uses for the first time this year, up from about 18 percent last year and 10 percent in 2010, according to one forecast published last week. And while work on some solar and wind projects has been delayed by the outbreak, industry executives and analysts expect the renewable business to continue growing in 2020 and next year even as oil, gas and coal companies struggle financially or seek bankruptcy protection.

In many parts of the world, including California and Texas, wind turbines and solar panels now produce electricity more cheaply than natural gas and coal. That has made them attractive to electric utilities and investors alike. It also helps that while oil prices have been more than halved since the pandemic forced most state governments to order people to stay home, natural gas and coal prices have not dropped nearly as much. Even the decline in electricity use in recent weeks as businesses halted operations could help renewables, according to analysts at Raymond James & Associates. That's because utilities, as revenue suffers, will try to get more electricity from wind and solar farms, which cost little to operate, and less from power plants fueled by fossil fuels.
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Oil Companies Are Collapsing, but Wind and Solar Energy Keep Growing More

Oil Companies Are Collapsing, but Wind and Solar Energy Keep Growing

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  • The government will bail them out with your tax dollars.

    • The government will bail them out with your tax dollars.

      That will only postpone their inevitable demise.

      • As long as they fund campaigns on the way down, the politicians will win.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aids5 ( 6746664 )
        I suppose that we will run out of oil in the ground eventually, but they have been calling themselves "energy companies" for longer than you have been alive.

        • The problem is that 60% of oil is used for transportation. The rest is feedstock for various industrial processes (ie. chemicals and plastics). What this means in practical terms is those jurisdictions with oil that is relatively cheap to process (Saudi light sweet crude, for instance), will do relatively well, as opposed to the heavier crude of countries like Venezuela or the oil sands in Alberta and North Dakota. Non-conventional oil reserves will drop in value to the point where they won't be worth pulli

      • Why is the oil company's demise inevitable? Petrol and diesel are only some of the products you enjoy, while many others have no viable alternatives. Oil companies will exist for a long time. They may not make stuff that you burn in your car, but they will continue to ensure your planes fly, your roads get built, your shirts get made, your coke bottles can be made.

        Hell with their past adaptations they may still make the thing that you put in your car, certainly a significant part of charging infrastructure

        • That represents about 40% of every barrel of oil. If oil consumption falls to just 40% of what it is today, sure there are winners, but there are going to be some serious losers.

          • And those winners will be oil companies.

            • Big oil companies. The losers will be the smaller outfits, and a helluva lot of the companies whose stock and trade is servicing wells and other facilities. The big guys will clean house, take what's worth taking, and all those orphaned wells and other sites that aren't worth a damn will be left to the taxpayer to deal with, a beautiful legacy for future generations (oh, as well as all the sequestered CO2 being shoved into the atmosphere).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dwywit ( 1109409 )

          That's what I say - use the oil while it's cheap, to build what's necessary for when it's not cheap. Battery factories, electric infrastructure, PV factories, and so on.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by blindseer ( 891256 )

            That's what I say - use the oil while it's cheap, to build what's necessary for when it's not cheap.

            That sounds like a great idea.

            Battery factories, electric infrastructure, PV factories, and so on.

            And so on? You mean like onshore windmills, geothermal power plants, hydroelectric dams, and nuclear power plants?

            We need energy that is abundant, domestically sourced, low in CO2 emissions, low in demand for labor/land/material/resources, and low in cost.

            There aren't many PV cell factories in the USA, and I'm thinking that if people aren't catching on to the idea on the need to distance ourselves from China economically now then they will soon. Solar PV is expensive, resourc

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dwywit ( 1109409 )

              "You mean like onshore windmills, geothermal power plants, hydroelectric dams"

              Definitely.

              "and nuclear power plants"

              Not until we re-structure the assessment, approval, and funding issues. NIMBY issues about wind turbines and PV farms are trivial compared to the fuss about building nuke plants.

              You can argue that PC panels aren't cheap, but their lifetime running costs are close to zero. You can't say that about Nukes. I'll grant you that total lifetime energy produced by nukes will exceed that of almost any

      • Not.

        These "yay for Team Renewables" articles that keep popping up on Slashdot are worse than annoying.

        Post one of these articles when there is a cost-effective storage/demand shifting solution not only for the "duckbill" daily cycle but also for the large seasonal variations in the renewable supply/power demand mismatch.

        Sure you can keep building solar and wind installations cheaply, but until those problems are solved, you are just making electric power expensive and unreliable for industry, commerc

        • Electrical grid infrastructure must build-out as well. The US government has restricted tax breaks, and state utility commissions have made it difficult to put consumer energy back into the US electrical grid. The fiefdoms of power companies won't make it easy to continue wind/solar/PV initiatives because eventually they lose out as their remaining clientele break free from their monopolies.

          But Germany may never bill at a lower rate than the US for this reason: taxes and real estate. Putting up turbines and

          • Putting up turbines and PV arrays doesn't happen in Germany because of NIMBY attitudes.
            Strange that Germany is among the leaders with wind power and solar power ... oops.

            BTW: you do not need real estate. Most wind farms are on ... farms! :P And most solar power is on ... roofs :P

        • Germany has nowhere the US capacity for producing solar and wind.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Why *Germany*, particularly? Why not one of dozens of other European nations? The UK, for example.

        • Get back to me when electric power in Germany is billed at a lower rate than in the US.
          Why would it?

          The grid costs are the same, and a typical German has a much lower bill than a typical American, because we use 1/4th to 1/10th of what you use :P

    • Re:Never fear (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @03:52PM (#59918448)

      It's a bit more complex than that. The larger players actually don't WANT a bailout. They have the liquidity to survive a year or two of very low prices. The small and mid-size firms don't. Without a bailout, the little guys (little being relative) could go bankrupt. The big guys can then scoop of the assets for peanuts and consolidate their hold on the market.

      To the extent there's likely to be a "bailout,: it would be some sort of agreed upon production cut through the Texas Railroad Comission and OPEC, and/or tariffs on imports. No tax dollars would be spent, but consumer prices would pay for it implicitly. That being said, it's more of a timing difference than an absolute one. Without price support, companies will need to shut-in wells which can permanently reduce the production capacity of an oil field. Additionally, even more long-term investment will be cancelled. That means that once demand recovers, there will be a lot less supply available, and the prices will snap back much harder.

      • That means that once^H^H^H^H *IF* demand recovers, there will be a lot less supply available, and the prices will snap back much harder.

        Fixed it for you.

      • That means that once demand recovers, there will be a lot less supply available, and the prices will snap back much harder.

        And when the demand and the prices go up, the supply will follow.

    • The government will bail them out with your tax dollars.

      Well... *This* Administration (or one like it) will anyway.

    • You mean the gov will provide a Production Tax Credit for oil/gas, like they currently do for wind turbines? (https://windexchange.energy.gov/projects/tax-credits) Or maybe like the tax credits you get for installing solar panels. (Full disclosure: I took advantage of the solar panel credit last year.)

  • The reason that oil and gas companies are doing so badly right now is because Saudi Arabia and Russia are having an oil price war right now [wikipedia.org], driving prices so low that it's eliminated profit for most producers.

    It has jack-all to do with renewables.

    • Also people are driving less, but probably not consuming much less electricity. So oil is not needed, but wind and solar power still is, as is coal.

    • No not quite. There's a whole cocktail of problems right now. The market itself has never quite seen conditions like this and we're not talking about cheap oil, everyone's seen that before.

      But you're right it has nothing to do with renewables.

    • but the Corona virus means there's a _lot_ less travel, and travel uses a lot of power. Heck, there's less economic activity in general, so same deal. That's what made SA and Russia play nice for now. But it's not going to be nearly enough. It'll be months until the price recovers, and the general economic damage will keep the price down.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )

        Exactly, and low prices of liquids will keep new shale wells from being drilled, in the past the liquid fraction would pay for the drilling and the gas was the profit, with liquid prices in the tank nobody will be starting new wells (heck if it stays low enough they might turn off the pumps because it won't be worth the cost of electricity). That dropping supply will actually raise the price of natural gas barring a huge drop in industrial usage.

    • Re:Bullshit framing from a dishonest article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @04:08PM (#59918502) Journal

      Oil wasn't doing that great even before the price war. The price war has only exacerbated, and perhaps accelerated the decline. Petro-jurisdictions have been pulling oil out of the ground for five or six years at far greater rates than even modestly increasing demand justifies. This isn't the behavior of an industry that sees itself in a strong long-term growth trajectory. The Russian-Saudi price war is a symptom, not a cause.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      The reason that oil and gas companies are doing so badly right now is because Saudi Arabia and Russia are having an oil price war right now [wikipedia.org], driving prices so low that it's eliminated profit for most producers.

      It has jack-all to do with renewables.

      I think you entirely missed the point of the article. It said that normally when oil prices drop then you'd expect oil to be a cheaper fuel for electricity power and hence renewable electricity generation would shrink as an overall proportion. The article is about why that hasn't happened.

      You're right that the oil price drop is related to the oil price war.

      But the question fuel source for electricity generation, and its price, is ENTIRELY related to renewables.

    • It's also wrong to conclude anything about the future of oil because the drop in price did not trigger a surge in demand. The current lockdown has pretty much prevented any possibility of that happening.
    • I don't see the bullshit framing you are complaining about. The article summary clearly says:

      The renewable-energy business is expected to keep growing, though more slowly, in contrast to fossil fuel companies, which have been hammered by low oil and gas prices.

      It's noteworthy because usually when oil and gas drops, it drives up oil and gas demand which in turn squeezes out renewables which would also suffer. That's not happening this time. That is significant because it gives renewables a chance to grab significant markets share for energy from oil and gas. This is a good thing if you are at all concerned about climate change. Maybe you aren't so you want to be argume

  • if oil/gas is so inexpensive, why aren't (other than worse mileage vehicles) companies taking advantage of the window?

    It's probably cheaper to run a diesel or gasoline generator now, than to invest in renewable energy... yeah it's short term, but wouldn't the short term ROI make up for not investing 10s of thousands when you can't even get an installer to come and build out your solar roof/windmill?

    • Re:I don't really pretend to understand (Score:4, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @04:16PM (#59918528)

      It's probably cheaper to run a diesel or gasoline generator now, than to invest in renewable energy...

      No. Not even close. A gallon of gasoline has about 130 MJ of energy. A typical generator will convert that to electricity at 20% efficiency. So that is 26 MJ or about 7 kwh.

      If you pay $2 for a gallon of gas, that is about 30 cents per kwh.

      Modern wind turbines produce power for a tenth of that.

    • It's probably cheaper to run a diesel or gasoline generator now, than to invest in renewable energy... yeah it's short term, but wouldn't the short term ROI make up for not investing 10s of thousands when you can't even get an installer to come and build out your solar roof/windmill?

      So you are just guessing. No it would not. Do you have diesel generators sitting around unused ready to power the grid? Probably not. Also even "cheap" oil is four times the price of gas. Integrated gas production plants have an efficiency of up to 65%, diesel generators are 30%, so the fuel cost doubles yet again. Anyone building power production capacity is planning for the next 20 years, not next quarter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Oil is ridiculously expensive for energy generation. We only really use it for special cases where it's energy density is critical: transportation and emergencies.

      As for gas and coal, they still cost money. If you're a utility and demand is decreasing, you shut down the generators that are most expensive *to run* first. Nobody is going to build a new plant based on current fossil fuel prices.

      • I really hope most governments are smart enough to keep building new fossil fuel power plants. I see few realistic alternatives on the horizon.

        I'm fine with saving fuel for them with renewables, but I do like reliable power.

      • Oil is ridiculously expensive for energy generation. We only really use it for special cases where it's energy density is critical: transportation and emergencies.

        And on islands for electricity. Places like Hawaii burn a lot of fuel oil for electricity because running a pipe for natural gas is not practical, and (I'm not sure why) it appears shipping in coal isn't all that practical either. Japan also burns a lot of oil for electricity, especially after the national shutdown of all nuclear power plants after Fukushima. The burning of oil for electricity dropped significantly after nuclear power plants were brought back online.

        As for gas and coal, they still cost money. If you're a utility and demand is decreasing, you shut down the generators that are most expensive *to run* first. Nobody is going to build a new plant based on current fossil fuel prices.

        You mean outside of emergency power ge

  • I'm not sure how the article is drawing the conclusion that Coronavirus and the OPEC-lead oil crash isn't hurting renewables. All of these events came to a front just a few weeks ago. We haven't even begun to see the impact of the oil price crash on renewable energy. Any new renewable projects that did come online in the last 5 weeks were almost certainly planned before these events.

  • I never got this whole doom & gloom attitude and apparently Wall Street doesn't either.. I actually bought a bunch of oil stocks during this crash. They're doing really well & pay good dividends. I am not worried about oil companies. I even fucking hate cars too, but I see the value in petroleum for the foreseeable future and am happy to invest in those companies.

    I think we misuse oil now. We just use it as something to burn. It's much better as a starter for plastics and other petroleum pr

    • It depends on the type of oil. The Saudis have the luck of sitting on some of the highest quality crude oil on the planet, whereas other jurisdictions like Canada and Russia, by and large, have far lower quality oil that requires a lot more processing. One of the big battles in Canada has been over the shipping of bitumen to the West Coast of Canada, when no one is really sure what a bitumen spill on a large body of water would look like. But either way, those lower quality oils take more energy and more co

    • Are electric vehicles ready to replace industrial uses, like construction gear, locomotives, airplanes, etc?

      No.

    • Oil outside of transportation and electricity is a teeny tiny fraction of oil use.

      Petroleum Jelly and Plastics are a rounding error of oil consumption.

  • there's trillions of dollars in assets tied up in oil. If these assets suddenly (in economic terms) become worthless or even worth 1/2 as much what's that going to do?

    I find it hard to believe the oil industry, in particular the Middle Eastern countries who's power depends on oil, will go quietly into that good night...

    • there's trillions of dollars in assets tied up in oil. If these assets suddenly (in economic terms) become worthless or even worth 1/2 as much what's that going to do?

      It will cause people who buy options and commodities to lose money.

    • I don't think the Middle East has that much to worry about. As I said above, it's oil is a lot easier to refine. It's places like Russia, North Dakota, Venezuela and Alberta, with pretty shitty quality crude (or in Alberta and North Dakota's case, bitumen oil) that have to worry. They only way they remain competitive over the next few decades is either by massive direct subsidies, or by trying to set up cartels of their own (like Alberta has tried to float to US producers; slap massive tariffs on Saudi oil

    • there's trillions of dollars in assets tied up in oil. If these assets suddenly (in economic terms) become worthless or even worth 1/2 as much what's that going to do?

      Because so much of our economy relies on petroleum transportation fuels my guess is that if oil prices are cut in half then that means an economic boom.

      I know that there's a lot of emergency generators and small power plants that burn, or can burn, fuel oil to produce electricity that if oil gets real cheap then people will be firing up these generators to save money. Maybe they won't run them 24/7 but they can run them at peak times to avoid having to burn coal.

      Cheap petroleum fuels will be bad for a very

  • Oil price didn't fall because of the Corona-virus, oil price fell because the dickheads running Russia and Saudi Arabia are too greedy to be able to do a simply thing like run a cartel, and they know that a low oil price screws US oil from fracking.

    • Oil prices were already pretty darned low before the turf war between the Russians and the Saudis, so low that places like Venezuela and Canada have had to sell their oil at steep discounts.

      • Oil prices were already pretty darned low before the turf war between the Russians and the Saudis, so low that places like Venezuela and Canada have had to sell their oil at steep discounts.

        And a lot of anti-oil people here are happy to see Alberta suffer. On the bright side this is a great time to buy a new pickup or SUV, so the joke is on really them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          I never understood the appeal of a pickup or a SUV. So what's the point of buying one beside making a joke at anti-oil people?

          And for that, a SUV is damn expensive. Even an elaborate April fool will be much cheaper. On the other hand, it's your money. And if you spend it on jokes no one understands, so be it.

        • With Alberta projected to have a 25% unemployment rate, who is it exactly that will be buying pickup or SUV? And where will they buy them. You think dealerships are immune from all of this? Any manufacturing demand right now isn't going to be directed towards building lots of gas guzzlers. Cheap gas isn't a sign of a flourishing economy in the Prairies, it's a sign of severe economic collapse. And be mindful here that that collapse began a few years before the Pandemic or Russia and the Saudis getting into

          • I've been seeing some really good deals on new vehicles right now, but even if most people cannot afford them at this moment, I expect there to still be great deals in the fall when hopefully some semblance of normal starts returning. I'm on the market myself, but not in a rush.

            Agreed oil sands need a lot higher price to be profitable in AB. Much oil will have to just sit there for now, but it will indeed be worth more again in the future, no matter how much you hope otherwise. For now low prices are bad

  • Summary shows ignorance of current events (Score:4, Informative)

    by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @04:06PM (#59918490) Journal

    the kind of double-digit drop in oil and gas prices the world is experiencing now because of the coronavirus pandemic

    No, the drop in oil prices is a direct result of OPEC and Russia having a price war [washingtonpost.com]. It has very little to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • Re:Summary shows ignorance of current events (Score:5, Insightful)

      by careysub ( 976506 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @04:31PM (#59918580)

      From the linked article;

      As the pandemic stretched on, there were estimates that it could knock out as much as a third of global oil demand. The slump in prices threatened millions of jobs and the political stability of oil-dependent nations.

      All of the reporting on the production war I have seen finds the COVID-19 pandemic driven drop in demand, both existing and prospective, as the trigger for the war. Dropping demand meant lower sales and revenue for everyone, and this is a battle over who gets how much.

      • Yep, OPEC is actually pretty toothless these days with all the new extraction sources (US shale a good example) let alone the decades of infighting. Drop in demand is clearly due to COVID-related lockdowns, however you'd have to be a fool to think this is anything but a temporary drop in demand. Many of the renewables ideologues think it's just a matter of opportunity and motivation to switch away from fossil fuels, but the reality they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge is things like solar/wind simply ca

        • It's a pretty well known fact that big oil is actively keeping us from having solar powered cars.

          Just slap a few solar panels on the roof, along a witty, pithy bumper sticker; and you're all set.

    • Indeed the article is off base there. However there is a very real effect on the oil industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically around the glut of jet and mogas now in storage. Historically refineries have done well when the oil price drops, now... not so much.

  • This is completely uncharted territory (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @04:15PM (#59918526)

    From an industry insider let's just say we've never experienced anything like this before. There's a whole concoction of problems leading to an upset market that is borderline impossible to adequately deal with. I'll go through some of the details:

    - Crude price has collapsed. The price war has seen major drop in the crude price.
    - Mogas demand has collapsed. People just aren't driving anywhere.
    - Diesel demand has shot up in many areas. This was a surprise to hear but on the recent margin announcement diesel refiners are killing it due to demand for haulage. Makes sense too, I can't be the only one who has basically increased my ordering online by several fold. To say nothing of logistics of supplies for medical equipment. A lot of manufacturing is ongoing as well. The transport industry is making diesel very profitable.
    - Jet fuel demand has plummeted. What's a word worse than plummeted? There's been an unprecedented drop in jet fuel demand.

    Now as to what this means financially:
    While historically a price war is bad for upstream segments, downstream often kill it with high refining margins and providing there isn't a retail price war there is still very much an ability to make money. We saw this in 98, 09, and 16, and companies which had a combined upstream / downstream segment did remarkably well compared to upstream only companies. However we don't have that situation right now. The crack for mogas is so low that refineries lose money on every drop sold before taking into account refining costs themselves. This is offset by the demand for diesel which is keeping diesel producing refineries afloat. A lot of diesel producing refineries are trying to max this out. A lot of predominately petrol producing refineries are running on min rates. The other thing here that is saving money for oil companies is chemicals. Holy shit the margains have never been so high. If you're running ethylene crackers or polyolefin units you're killing it. The margins for chemicals have increased 10x. One local refinery made more money in March than they did all of last year.

    Time for celebration right? Not quite. Everyone's about to be screwed.
    Remember jet fuel? You can't just stop making it. You can't stop making mogas either. Refineries that make these primarily are on min rates or facing shutdown. Refineries that make diesel and chemicals are desperately looking to shove their diesel and jet anywhere they can. Tanks are filling up. Tankers are filling up, and in many cases it's worth spending several 10s of thousdans a day to demurrage a tanker full of diesel than it is to reduce rates, but even floating storage is filling up and those refineries killing it are facing a need to shutdown.
    Which leaves us with the oil price war. Upstream can weather than providing they keep pumping, but if no one is pumping the tanks are filling up, and once they are full you have to shut in a well. Depending on the design of the well that could be very costly and in some cases even lead to well abandonment and a requirement to redrill.

    The oil industry has never been here before:
    Refineries that can't make a profit are stopping or at min rates.
    Refineries that can make a profit are running out of storage and are stopping or at min rates.
    Upstream is rapidly running out of place to store their currently worthless black gold and are at risk of stopping.

    Sounds good in theory, but this is going to suck when the world returns to "normal" and those costs of restarting are felt.

    • And the winner if oil wells in North America begin shutting down? Well, you guessed it, the Saudis and the Russians, who seem keen to just keep pushing it out. As much as they're trying to wound each other, North American producers are firmly in both countries' sites.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Russian and Saudi oil production doesn't really affect the US anymore. The problem is going to be in Europe, where they have all but banned productive natural fuel exploitation except perhaps Norwegian oil (which Russia
        has been staking claims to and the EU has historically let them).

        US oil isn't going to completely shut down and most of US fuel production has shifted to natural gas instead of crude oil. More than likely, we'll be floating overseas company bonds to keep producing as the EU comes begging for

        • Europe has done nothing of the sort. It is a mixture of never having much oil to begin with and also running out of what they've had. All major oil fields in Europe are currently being very heavily utilised. The market has slightly shifted to gas, but upstream gas exploration has had some very serious sideeffects in some countries.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        And the winner if oil wells in North America begin shutting down? Well, you guessed it, the Saudis and the Russians, who seem keen to just keep pushing it out. As much as they're trying to wound each other, North American producers are firmly in both countries' sites.

        Wait, the article you're quoting said the opposite. It said that the advantage of US production was that shale can be easily turned off while things are uneconomical, while Saudi and Russian production will be incredibly hard to switch off and they have nowhere to even store their surpluss.

        Now a separate factor is that US shale producers are financed by debt and they'll default if the price doesn't increase soon. But that just means that the shale-producing assets will be bought cheaply by someone else who

    • From an industry insider let's just say we've never experienced anything like this before....
      Sounds good in theory, but this is going to suck when the world returns to "normal" and those costs of restarting are felt.

      I was in a meeting once with fracking industry leaders. They said fracking was different in that wells were inexpensive and quick to drill, and easy to turn off and on. In a price war they could turn off production when prices dropped below their profit floor, and turn it back on when prices went back up. They felt they could easily ride out a price war.

      Is your experience different?

      • I assume you are talking about shale fracking. That is absolutely right, but ultimately fracking still makes up a small portion of global oil supply. Additionally fracking shale is expensive for oil (though that cost has a lot of variables in it). It is predominantly used for extraction of gas, however when the oil price is high shale fracking is very lucrative. It's true they can more easily switch on and off and they may be faster to react, however the profit potential of a large underground oil reserve i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      "when the world returns to "normal" and those costs of restarting are felt."

      Isn't that going to exert a great deal of competitive pressure to be first back online? IANA oil industry economist but aren't there parallels to the "golden age" of oil expansion? Get the wells and refineries up and working ASAP, because if you don't, your competitor will, and they all know just how much money there is to be made.

  • As a general response to the horde of comments blaming the price crash of oil on the production war between Saudi and Russia, your focus is too narrow. Yes, the price war has driven the price lower, quicker than it otherwise may have fallen but demand was already collapsing due to the virus. The production war only started because these two countries couldn't come to an agreement over how much production to cut to try and prop up prices that were already in free fall.

    As for renewables, the strides they

  • Oil is mostly used to power moving things (cars. trucks, planes and ships) Solar and wind power compete with natural gas and coal. Hopefully the Corona Virus Depression will hasten the demise of the latter, but the really good thing is, while it lasts we are definitely burning a lot less carbon.

  • being able to get your energy locally is the killer feature. the US might have it's own oil, but even at a local level utilities and individuals (private or corporate) put great value in having independence and some degree of control over their energy supply. price fluctuations rooted in the political schemings of Russia and Saudi Arabia is just one example of why.

  • So a lot of people will still need gasoline. 100% of airplanes use kerosene. A handful of demo flifgts show biodiesel wirks too.

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