Posted on 10/26/2021 7:59:35 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
The world is facing a “real shortage of energy” that could lead to social unrest, according to Blackstone Inc. co-founder Stephen Schwarzman.
“We’re going to end up with a real shortage of energy,” he said at the fifth edition of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
“And when you have a shortage it’s just going to cost more and it’s probably going to cost a lot more. And when that happens you’re going to get very unhappy people around the world, in the emerging markets in particular,” he added.
Schwarzman’s warning was echoed by chairman of BlackRock Inc., Larry Fink, who said there is a likelihood of oil soon reaching $100 a barrel, particularly in light of governments and investors directing their economies and energy systems away from fossil fuels.
“Inflation, we are in a new regime,” said Fink. “There are many structural reasons for that. Short-term policy related to environmentalism, in terms of restricting supply of hydrocarbons, has created energy inflation and we are going to be living with that for some time.”
Surging energy prices are currently playing out across the globe, with several European countries facing soaring energy bills amid a rise in commodities such as oil, natural gas, and coal.
Gas prices rose by more than 35 percent in September amid lower supplies of natural gas and a surge in demand as pandemic-hit economies around the world reopen, prompting fears that there is simply not enough gas stored up for the winter if temperatures were to be particularly cold in the northern hemisphere.
Lackluster output from Europe’s windmills and solar farms and maintenance work taking nuclear generators and other plans offline have also contributed to the energy price hike.
In Europe, supply levels were at 16 percent below the five-year average last month, a record low for that time of year, and European utilities have turned to coal to combat such shortages, even asking Russia for more supplies. As a consequence, coal is now trading at sky-high levels.
But it’s not just Europe that is battling with declining natural gas supplies. According to the Energy Information Administration, the level of gas in U.S. storage was 7.4 percent below the five-year average in September and 16.8 percent below the level at the same time last year.
China, which is almost totally reliant on coal, earlier this month moved to secure more supplies—including electricity and oil—as the country faces electricity supply issues that have forced factories to shut down and caused ongoing supply disruption issues to multiple large global companies.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs on Monday said a strong rebound in global oil demand could push Brent crude oil prices above its year-end forecast of $90 per barrel.
Brent crude was trading at $85.41 a barrel on Tuesday, as multiple large consumers such as the United States, Japan, and India, have urged producers to pump more. Gas futures in Asia and Europe also reached record highs this month.
Goldman Sachs Group Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said on Tuesday that concerns were already mounting that the world would enter a period of higher inflation and slowing growth.
Amin Nasser, Chief Executive Officer of Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, also reiterated the need to produce more, noting that a decrease in global oil output is a “huge concern.”
“The spare capacity is shrinking,” Nasser said in an interview in Riyadh, Bloomberg reported. “It’s now getting to a situation where there’s limited supply—whatever is left that’s spare is declining rapidly.”
The company is investing billions of dollars to increase oil production capacity to 13 million barrels per day by 2027.
Despite growing concerns over increased prices for everything from gas to food, the U.S. Federal Reserve and many economists maintain that the recent spike in inflation is “transitory,” and merely reflective of the ongoing effects of supply-chain breakdowns during the pandemic and shifts in consumer demand.
We definitely don’t have the infrastructure to handle lots of people using electric cars. We’ll need a few dozen nuclear plants for that. We had better get on it soon.
Social unrest. There’s a joke. Most people seem fine in our direction toward slavery.
We have all the petroleum we need. The great reset people just don’t want to use it.
That...and imagine a world without commie dems..FREEDOM
I think it may be a good thing to have a real shortage of EVERYTHING when the wrong people have stolen leadership.
Keep the oil and coal in the ground. Let it come out when FedGov (and California) is not a cabal of communists and thieves.
We not only have lots of petroleum, we have huge amounts of coal which can be transformed into gasoline and diesel.
The technology currently isn’t used in the US, because of environmental regs about the amount of CO2 emitted.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/coal-liquid-efficient-gasoline1.htm
Fake shortage
True, but the liberals oppose nuclear power. Good luck on getting all these nuclear plants built.
I read where Cal is decommissioning their last remaining nuke plant. WTG Cal. I wonder, if you burn a sufficiently large candle near a windmill, does the rising hot air move the vanes??
Right
Biden does everything he can to kill off Domestic energy production. His regulators are busy slow walking every application for permits so that it takes years rather then months to domestic production up and running
But that has nothing at all to do with the shortages. It all just “fake”
It's amazing?
Economics 101: Without reliable, relatively cheap electricity, there is poverty, social and political unrest.
Europe bought into the BS Climate Change crap with their windmills and solar farms and they deserve whats' going to happen to them.
No we are NOT. The fools, and I do not use that word lightly, have energy sources all over the planet, especially the USA, which they refuse to use.
The hard headedness will kill people.
BlackRock drives the US government and the coup and the move to centralize and globalize and greenize everything. And now they are worried.
Got it.
Nonsense. We have an unlimited supply of energy from the only source in the universe, solar fusion. What is needed is more efficient ways to capture and store it. Waiting millions of years for biomass to decay and produce oil is one way, but maybe not the quickest. Converting solar energy directly to electrons or by means of it’s actions on wind and water are good, but emulating the same fusion process in a controlled and safe way would be much better. We’d have it today if not for Chernobyl and that bitch Jane Fonda and her stupid China Syndrome movie that scared everyone to death and convinced them we were no smarter than the USSR was.
The shortages are created by corrupt governments and their communist cabal overlords.
Rid the world of those people is the nearest cure.
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