Opinion: Reports of oil and gas industry's death are greatly exaggerated - - Edmonton Journal

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Pushing back against the narrative.  Good.  Happy to see some level heads and rational reasoning has not yet died..

Fear Porn pushed by the media can be addictive like crack.

However, rather than blindly accepting the prevalent media narrative that ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING and being informed what you should think, it might be prudent to calm the f*ck down, back up a bit and look at the bigger pictures around the world.

Here is one "bigger picture" viewpoint, for your consideration.

 

Opinion: Reports of oil and gas industry's death are greatly exaggerated

In 1897 while in London in the midst of a worldwide speaking tour, the American author Mark Twain became the subject of rumours back home that he was dead. To get at the truth, a reporter from the New York Journal wrote to Twain to ask if he was indeed dead or gravely ill.

In response, Twain, with his usual wry wit, wrote back chronicling how he’d also heard the rumours of his illness: “I have even heard on good authority that I was dead.” Twain explained that the gossip resulted from his cousin’s illness and mistakenly spread from there. “The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration,” wrote Twain.

Something like that mistaken assertion about Twain now faces the oil and natural gas industry worldwide and in Canada: that oil and gas demand will never resume from the steep decline now occurring as a result of coronavirus and the near-worldwide lockdown’s effect on the economy.

Some anti-oil and gas advocates are sure of this, and are demanding that Canada somehow “transition” away from oil and gas. But that’s not possible, according to the informed opinion of University of Manitoba professor of the environment (emeritus) Vaclav Smil.

The barriers to a transition ordered via government policy were summarily addressed by Smil in his 2017 book, Energy Transition: Global and National Perspectives. Prof. Smil pointed out that, “As in the past, the unfolding global energy transitions will last for decades, not years, and modern civilization’s dependence on fossil fuels will not be shed by a sequence of government-dictated goals.”

It’s important to note that Smil wants to see renewables succeed. He is also concerned about carbon emissions and their effect upon global temperatures. But the energy professor prefers to deal in hard facts and actual data that result from understanding the physical properties of various forms of energy.

Back to oil and gas demand. The coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted consumption of both in the short term. However, in previous recessions, oil consumption declined (though natural gas did not always follow the same pattern) before demand resumed and increased.  ...

 

 

[pisstol + 48]

The article is from Canada. I learned from oilprice.com that the U.S. badly needs Canadian crude for diesel. The USA doesn't get along with Venezuela and doesn't want to depend on Saudi Arabia. The success of Canadian oil is a matter of national security to the U.S.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trump-Could-Use-Nuclear-Option-To-Make-Saudi-Arabia-Pay-For-Oil-War.html

"The other major historical sources of this for the U.S. are not in a position to fill the gap, with U.S. sanctions still imposed on oil imports from Venezuela, Mexican flows unreliable, and Canada’s pipeline capacity to the U.S. not able to handle any more more exports south until the long-delayed Keystone pipeline is up and running at some point in 2023."