“Look what technology did to shale gas,” said the conference speaker. “We now have abundant resources and the price of natural gas will be low for a long time.” Before heads in the audience could stop nodding, the speaker delivered the punch line: “What happened to gas is going to happen to light oil.”
Any worthwhile TV medical drama has a mandatory life-and-death scene. A patient lies on a hospital bed. His heartbeat beeps rhythmically while a green line traces a jagged pulse on a black, gridded screen. Suddenly, the patient’s heart gives out, the green line goes horizontal, the beep sustains and everyone in the room panics.
I have never heard an oil executive recite poetry in a board meeting. But that’s not to say it hasn’t happened. Nor does it suggest that wise words can’t come from literature.
What will the oil price recovery look like? It’s a topic being hotly debated across the oil capitals of the world; from Dubai to Aberdeen, from Houston to Calgary; in the coffee shops and around family dinner tables, all the way to the boardrooms.
