Thoughts on the "End of Oil"

by Thomas Neuburger

The phrase "the end is near" has overtones so cartoonish as to render it meaningless. Joke after joke has been built on this announcement, many of them excellent. One of my favorites is above; another is below:

But however much we laugh at these pronouncements, things do end — just not when we expect them to. We ourselves will end, as will our earth, swallowed, in five billion years or so, by an expanding, burning, dying sun, all to be returned to space dust from which something else will be made.

But is that end, or any of those ends, near? In the case of ourselves, we hope not. In the case of the earth, not likely. In the case of our species ... well, we'll have to see.

At some point, oil as a commodity will end. The question is, will it end prior to the end of civilized life, which may or may not be near, or will it cause the end of civilized life, in which case that end will be nearer than anyone wishes?

Use of oil as a commodity will certainly peak; many think that has already occurred. According Sierra Club writer Antonia Juhasz, the consulting firm Kinsey and Co. "warned oil-producing nations in 2019 to begin 'sufficiently diversifying their economies for a post-[oil] peak demand world.'"

Something will kill oil, and all carbon-based fuels, as a product — but what will that be? The end of a market for it is one such cause, based either on a happy conversion to renewable energy sources (the end of demand via choice), or less happily, the end of man's ability to use it in enough quantity to matter (the end of demand via death and decimation). In both of these cases, though, the end of oil comes via demand.

Can its use also be strangled by supply, not just lack of supply, but an over-supply that drives the price below the cost of production and makes the industry itself unviable and subject to collapse?

That's less certain, but it's the thesis of Ms. Juhasz's latest piece for Sierra, "The End of Oil Is Near." Her subtitle says, "The pandemic may send the petroleum industry to the grave," and she may indeed be right. This pandemic, like all economic depressions, is shutting down demand, causing oil tankers to park outside of ports like "an enemy invasion" that turn the seas around them into "aquatic parking lots."

"Today, the global oil industry is in a tailspin," she writes. "Demand has cratered, prices have collapsed, and profits are shrinking. The oil majors (giant global corporations including BP, Chevron, and Shell) are taking billions of dollars in losses while cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Smaller companies are declaring bankruptcy, and investors are looking elsewhere for returns. Significant changes to when, where, and how much oil will be produced, and by whom, are already underway. It is clear that the oil industry will not recover from COVID-19 and return to its former self. What form it ultimately takes, or whether it will even survive, is now very much an open question."

Perhaps her headline would better be written, "The end is near, but only if you cause it."

This Covid economy presents indeed a priceless opportunity with respect to fossil fuel. If indeed investor confidence has weakened to all-time lows and only "government bailout programs and subsidies could provide the lifeline the industry needs to stay afloat," deliberately denying those bailouts and subsidies may be our only hope — other than a chaotic market collapse in which a bailout is political poison — for ending the life our species' chief biological threat, Big Oil.

Make no mistake: The fossil fuel industry will kill us, in full knowledge that it dies with us, simply to extend its own existence and profits into the last decade allotted to anyone. It will not die so we can live; it will live so we and it can die together.

This makes both Joe Biden and Donald Trump into killers of monumental magnitude. Trump will accelerate fossil fuel production out of his own blindness and hubris, and at the behest of the monsters controlling his party. Biden will slow demand enough to "make a good show of it," a good show of caring about the rest of us, while still taking the industry's money and, in return, not restraining its ability to dig every drop and sell every ounce it can dig.

It's not even certain that Trump's race-to-ruin will end us faster than Biden's more measured destruction. If Trump's hands-off policy is allowed to run through an extended Covid-induced crisis, a chaotic market collapse may come sooner under Trump than under Biden's carefully managed "keep the industry afloat while seeming to restrain them" approach.

And should it be the case that Biden staves off an oil market collapse, its barons will honor him as a savior. By then he may not know what that honer even means, but his backers will, as will Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and all the other fossil fuel enablers we allow to rule us.

But we started with "the end is near." We should finish there as well. Though collapses happen quickly — just ask a certain czar of ill repute, or a Bourbon of headless note — I'll venture to say that like many other predators, these our destroyers, this blood-drinking vampire industry, will prove more resilient by far than any we've faced.

We've beaten malaria, smallpox, the plague; polio and tuberculosis; lions, tigers and bears, and all the beasts of the forest and savannas. But the barons of fossil fuel, I'm deeply afraid, ride us till we die ­— unless we, uncharacteristically­, stop them with organized intention and with force.

That means stopping the next elected president, whoever that poor fool is, with organized intention — and with force.