Oil - a coming supply crunch?

A new report by Paul Stevens for Chatham House the international affairs think-tank argues that unless there is a collapse in global oil demand within the next five to ten years (presumably the result of a severa global slowdown or sizeable shift to oil substitutes) there will be a serious oil ‘supply crunch’ because of inadequate investment by international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs). An oil supply crunch is where excess crude producing capacity falls to low levels and is followed by a crude ‘outage’ leading to a price spike. If this happens then the resulting price spike will carry serious policy implications with long-lasting effects on the global energy picture. The Stevens report can be downloaded in pdf format from this link.. Paul Stevens is Senior Research Fellow for Energy at Chatham House and Emeritus Professor at Dundee University.