LONDON, United Kingdom – London-based daily newspaper and weekly magazine The Ecomonist is predicting that the oil and gas industry faces an uncertain future for 2021. This is on the heels of a disastrous 2020. Writing in the publication’s annual outlook issue, Professor Sir Basil Lord Cheapsborough-Puffington of the London School of Ecomonics says that in the coming year the global market for hydrocarbon will shrink by 2% and employment will shrink by 20%. Most of the employment loss will be in the professional ranks, specifically engineers, geophysicists and geologists, of course.
Over time the oil and gas industry has had numerous up and down cycles and this is a really nasty down cycle. It is still possible that something can happen to turn things around immediately. For example, Saudi Arabia and Iran can get into a serious shooting war, it can be discovered that electric cars are responsible for spreading COVID-19 or a method developed for turning bitumen into chocolate.
Perhaps the most telling development is that companies such as TexxonMogul, Comical Philistine and Regal Douche Shill are diverting capital from oil and gas and putting it into so-called “clean” energy projects. Perhaps this is to get activist shareholders off their cases but also may just be hedging their bets. Since Alberta has the most cattle of any province in Canada, Comical Philistine is developing a system for collecting cow farts and purifying the methane for conversion into ethanol.
The ethanol in turn is added to gasoline as an extender. This lessens the amount of wheat and corn that is now being sacrificed to manufacture ethanol.
Speaking from an undisclosed quarantine location in Quebec, Monsieur Pierre Francais-Allemagne, CEO of Moosepeace Beer, is also interested in the cow fart ethanol. He said, “I will add the ethanol to the beer we sell out west and cut down on the fermenting time. Those barbarians will never taste the difference. That will save money that I can spend on my shelter for homeless snails and truffle-sniffing pigs.”
