Oil and gas markets have always been volatile. Prices went up, prices went down — sometimes violently — and when they did, fortunes were made and lost. The industry learned to live with volatility, confident that when the market went full cycle, the scarcity of the resource and their ability to find and tap it would keep them in business. However, that scarcity paradigm is gone forever.
The emergence of shale oil, push for energy decarbonization and possibility that COVID-19 may have both slowed economic growth and permanently changed mobility habits, makes it hard to believe the supply-demand balance will tip in favor of the industry again. Has the last oil and gas cycle come and gone?
