Quote:
Originally Posted by GH85Carrera
Lake Charles will turn into a ghost town without the refineries.
The real bottom line is there simply is NO substitute for petroleum. Everyone in the developed world likes to live in a house with heat and cooling, and clean running water and means to get around in comfort of a car or truck. Petroleum from oil to natural gas provide that.
|
There is a substitute for SOME petroleum. Higher efficiency of cars and planes, electric cars, alternative energy won't replace 100% of oil & gas in our lifetime, but will replace 10% to 20% of it in the next decade or two.
Unchanged supply + a 10-20% decline in demand = price crashes.
Price crash = cut in supply, especially higher cost supply.
What's the higher cost supply for oil? Oil sands, shale, new deepwater.
Maybe new deepwater will still go forward for geopolitical reasons - e.g. China might be happy to buy Brazilian offshore fields, to strategically secure oil supply. But hard to see what political imperative exists to support sand and shale operations that are uneconomic.