The past decades had been that of the idea of ‘limited’ fossil energy supplies and that they are not around forever. It was in the school textbooks and consumers around the world through primary, secondary and tertiary education had been taught that there are no ‘everlasting’ fossil fuel supplies and even in some textbooks, a timeline of around 2050 was given that they would all run out.
Refinery, Petrochemical and Generation are the products downstream of oil and gas. Certainly all those benefit with current cheap feedstock and questions remain if alternative sources of energy (collectively termed as renewables) would actually took off in light of this super competitive oil price.
As usual, there would always be 2 camps with one side championed by the ‘old’ industry while on the other hand, a camp which prominently represented by Tesla and Vestas alike. Nobody knows for sure what would happen years or decades down the road. However, both business models depend on ‘financial capital’ theory, in that in order to realise value or profits, there needs to be a process (either by labour force or by assets collectively known as fixed capital) and for transaction to take place (selling of the goods to customers, products include goods such as rubbers, plastics, gasoline, aviation fuel, electricity and etc).
The question is then now, will the old energy become irrelevant and that renewables energy will take off?
Perhaps there would be new business models emerging which would add extra values by cutting some in-efficient supply chains, models such as electricity grids which once depend solely upon fossil fuels, that may change in lieu of more diversified sources such as renewables like wind and solar. The world is a big place after all, with some places being remote far from any large scale economic activity and thus, with smaller market size, infrastructure developments and investments are at snail pace which feed itself into downward spiral of slow economic activities and growth.
With the economic of the infrastructure projects being called into question, there perhaps lie a new business opportunity, models like small scale refinery or electricity generation, affectionately known as microgrids and nanogrids. Even in developed economy and near economic centers, these new models had been implemented to complement existing grid and even might be able to take demand or lure consumers away from existing business (disruptions) and thus, at the end of the day, the viability of a business model be it new or old still runs down to cost and profit. The more one could accumulate profit and thus capital, the more solid it will stand and perhaps rule the future.
As to the previous question regarding products of oil and gas, everyone should have known by now and that the answer is really obvious and simple. Even the Big Oil is now betting on Downstream and were jumping into Renewable at the same time which act as a hedge for the uncertain future.
