Financial Times looks at trends in the oil industry in 2020
18:31
The American daily Financial Times has identified five trends in the oil market worth observing in 2020.
According to journalists, the American shale gas sector may be of particular interest. Rystad Energy, a research company, calculates that shale investment has fallen 6% this year to $129 billion and predicts that they will fall by another 11% in 2020, although they still expect a slight increase in production. According to FT, demand growth should also slow down. Oil demand was difficult in 2019 because of the trade war between the United States and China threatened to slow down the world economy. Demand is not positively influenced by the slowdown in economic development in India, the second most important motor of global demand for raw materials after China. The third area is the so-called Opec +, a cartel of oil-exporting countries and its allies, such as Russia, who have been fighting American shale since 2016 as part of a protest, and at the beginning of December made another production cut to prevent the market being overwhelmed with new supplies in the first half of next year.
It is also impossible to skip presidential elections in the United States. Lower oil prices have become for voters a key element of Donald Trump's economic plan; in the past, he was not afraid of harsh criticism of Opec + when he believed that the group - and especially a close ally of the United States Saudi Arabia - allowed too high prices. Finally, last but not least - the environment. Expectations that environmental trends will gain momentum hang over the industry as a whole, and some analysts predict that the summer of 2020 may be a decade in which oil consumption will eventually peak, after which it will only decline.
