Over the last months
demand for oil has collapsed, sending the price through the floor, but oil producers have
continued production regardless, because closing a well is an expensive procedure which
could also lead to reduced production after re-opening. As a result, global storage
is nearly at full capacity and already oil tankers, and probably bathtubs and
saucepans, are being called into use to hold the unwanted oil.
If demand doesn’t
recover in the next few weeks many oil wells will have to close, which may also
mean closing many oil-based businesses. Those governments showing signs of managing
the pandemic in a rational and effective way seem very unlikely to return to “normal”
any time soon, so mass oil well closure is looking increasingly probable.
Predictably, this is
being characterised from within the fossil fuel industry as a looming energy
crisis on an unprecedented scale. So, we are being asked to save the status quo
of trashing the global ecosystem to produce polluting and climate-wrecking
hydrocarbons, which also have, by the way, been the cause of many of the armed
conflicts of the last 100 years, with casualty figures way beyond those of
Covid-19.
As an opportunity to reboot
and move rapidly to sustainable, renewable, more localised energy production
this is equally unprecedented and equally massive. And we already have the
technologies. If we don’t seize the day, future generations will never forgive
us.
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