The covid-19 pandemic has provided a dramatic preview of a world in which demand for oil falls instead of rising
is now the number-one energy superpower anywhere in the world,” President Donald Trump told oilmen in Midland, Texas this summer, from a stage decorated with gleaming black barrels. The sheer volume of hydrocarbons that such American oilmen have released from the shale beneath Midland and previously unforthcoming geology elsewhere gives substance to his boast . Over the past decade America’s oil output has more than doubled and its gas production increased by over 50%.
Falling demand for fossil fuels will tilt the balance of power away from producers and towards consumers—though there will doubtless be reversals now and then along the way. And in a world which needs to generate much more fossil-free electricity, mass production of the means whereby to do so will become crucial, as will government backing and know-how in deployment. Being a mighty pumper of oil will do a lot less for America under such conditions than once it might have done.
In some instances competition for Chinese demand may be straightforward. When it embarked on a price war with Russia this spring, Saudi Arabia slashed prices on shipments bound for China. The country’s biggest refiners are mulling a plan for a buying consortium to strengthen their negotiating power with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. China will probably also flex its financial muscle as petrostates buckle under debt.
What China lacks in oil and gas supplies it makes up for with industrial policy, which it has long been using to support domestic coal production and nuclear power as well as what is now by far the world’s largest renewables sector. Chinese companies have invested in mines from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Chile and Australia, securing access to the minerals needed for solar panels, electric vehicles and the like.
Chinese companies have helped fill the gap. Some of this is through domestic investment. China produces 60% of the world’s “rare earths”, which have properties that make them useful in electric motors, among other things. They are not, generally, rare in a geological sense, but they can be in short supply.
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