While U.S. production grew slightly in 1978, and then remained stable until 1983 before once again growing. The emergence of the North Sea as a significant new oil supply basin (UK and Norway) as well as Mexico’s offshore oil success demonstrated the power the sustained higher oil prices had on creating new supplies. The impact of new supplies contributed to OPEC’s collapse.
At the same time oil supply outside of OPEC started growing, oil consumption in the developed world (OECD) fell, which is demonstrated by the United States and Europe consumption curves in Exhibit 13. Those two regions are the key part of the OECD. Non-OECD consumption continued growing. As the chart shows, the demand reduction was significant, and was key to crippling OPEC’s pricing power as was the growth in new oil supplies.
As we look at the factors helping to reshape today’s oil market, environmental pressures, especially the potential impact of electric vehicles, coupled with the impact on oil demand growth that will come in response to efforts by countries to decarbonize their economies, can be considered the equivalent of the 1970s oil price shock to global oil demand. Demand will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, but the annual rate of growth is likely to continue to slow until it eventually goes negative. Lower demand is coming at the same time oil companies are reducing well breakeven prices insuring more supplies in the future. These improved E&P economics is broadly similar in impact to the opening of new oil supply basins that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Just as the opening of new supply basins had a long-term impact, the reduced well breakeven prices will also have a long lasting impact. We can argue about how long the impact will last, but it is likely to last much longer than we expect.
History does not repeat, but it does rhyme, as suggested in the famous quote. In our view, the current oil industry downturn is rhyming more with the 1982-1986 cycle than with the 2008-2011 one. If that is true, then the industry may be looking at an extended period of low oil prices just as the industry experienced following the 1981 oil price peak. That span extended for 18 years as oil prices averaged below $45 a barrel, or the very long-term average of inflation adjusted oil prices, with the brief exceptions of the First Gulf War and 9/11. BP plc CEO (BP-NYSE) Robert Dudley’s comments in early 2015 that the industry needed to learn to live in a “lower for longer” environment seem to be proving accurate. That means the oil industry must continue adjusting its cost structure. The oil companies will need to keep their staffing lean, employ the best drilling and completion technologies available, and manage their balance sheets appropriately to succeed in the future. This environment doesn’t mean that there is no future for the oil industry. It means that corporate strategies must constantly be reassessed within a broader energy industry panorama subject to external pressures that will only grow in the future.
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