26 April 2020

Day 35 of UK lock down: Too much oil


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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