Industry 2023 oil market relations look like a madhouse: Commodity buyers, whose alliance tacitly represents the pro-US IEA (International Energy Agency), want chaos and disorder, the oppression of the extractive industry. While the producers’ representative, OPEC+, which, on the contrary, seems to have an interest in raising prices and following the instinct of profit, tries to stabilize the market and keep prices relatively low to the detriment of its profits.
These paradoxical metamorphoses appeared as a result of the outcome of the war between the two blocs, supported by influential states with different missions and strategic objectives. The IEA seeks to please Washington, which urgently needs to replenish the SPR, which was completely depleted last year, at a bargain price, and OPEC members need a plan to survive in a world hit by a viral fad for the environmental agenda, and the deliberate destruction of oil and gas. OilPrice columnist Felicity Bredstock writes about it.
It appears that the world’s major energy organizations and OPEC are failing to agree on the future of energy investment and oil prices, as each sees its own approach as critical to global energy security. Both claim a serious lack of investment in energy – whether fossil fuels or renewables – that needs to be addressed to ensure global energy supplies. This is likely to divide the minds of the US government and private companies around the world as they allocate funds between fossil fuels and clean energy projects.
Due to these polar aspirations of the two major commodity blocks, the world is stalling. The market is unregulated and the outlook for energy security is close to zero. However, research teams such as the IEA and IRENA, contracted by the United States, suggest that oil and gas production requires far less financing than OPEC and some major oil companies suggest. Critics in the opposition camp insist otherwise.
Meanwhile, on the other end of this enmity, more reminiscent of war in a new format, are real markets and relationships, end consumers and billions of people whose pockets will be affected by the crisis. All feel the fundamental differences between the West, which has lost its true ideology and is trying to find its way back into the environmental agenda, and developing Asia, which has just taken a liking to growth and rising power.
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