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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on December 29, 2020 at 17:38

The industry has a market problem and a financing problem.  They are connected.   The failure to make sustainable profits causes equity markets to look elsewhere for better investment opportunities.  Increased monitoring and regulations to reduce fugitive methane emissions are coming but not much else.  Renewable energy and electric vehicles will get some tax incentives that won't likely come close to equaling what the O&G industry has been getting for decades but that will accelerate the transition away from ICE vehicles.  O&G is heavily subsidized at the federal and state level.  I don't think that will change. 

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Permalink Reply by Bud on December 30, 2020 at 2:52

Thanks. Do you see natural gas fairing better than oil as a transition? Peak power units have been added with gas in many areas. I thought at one time we would see more CNG vehicles on the road, and I see some in the trucking industry, but not much private. It seems to me the wind and solar units still have the limit of mass storage needed but that is not there yet economically. Any big breakthroughs in the battery technology expected any time soon?

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on December 30, 2020 at 3:28

Gas fired electric generation will definitely have a place in the domestic energy mix into mid-century but it will not reach the level of deployment that it could have had if US energy policy had included the Clean Power Plan (CPP).  The CCP would have accelerated the retirement of coal fired generation when the only logical replacement would have been dual cycle natural gas plants.  Because coal fired generation was allowed to hang on as the market slowly abandoned it, renewable energy sources had time to evolve and become equally cost competitive with natural gas.  The evolution continues and solar+storage is now favored by many state governments and a large majority of investors.  The evolution will continue and solar+storage will eventually be the clear winner.

Oil demand as a vehicle fuel will be in decline this decade and excepting use as chemical feed stock, the future does not look promising.  Natural gas will also have an advantage demand wise based on LNG export but that's a hard demand to project long term.  CNG is used as a vehicle fuel here in the Haynesville Shale backyard for a good many fleet vehicles including city buses.  When the useful life of those vehicles is reached, they could very well be replaced by electric vehicles (EV).  The problem for light duty CNG vehicles is the requirement for a cylindrical tank for storage.  For reasonable range, the cylinder would take up one third to half the trunk space.  Length trips are a challenge to find strategically located refueling opportunities.

Battery technology and photo voltaic (PV) is improving on a very fast pace.  Science and investment favor both.  Perovskite technology is making PV cheaper and more efficient and solid state batteries will replace Lithium Ion.  EVs have incredible performance and better reliability and lower operating cost than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.  Once EVs are competitively priced, a majority of buyers will go electric.

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