Gabe Eckhouse

In 2016, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of a looming underinvestment crisis in the oil industry. As their director, Fatih Birol, explained in a Bloomberg interview(link is external) in February 2018, declining mature fields, sustained global demand growth, and, the collapse in investment following the 2016 commodity downturn, could produce a significant supply-demand imbalance between 2020 and 2025.

My work examines historic shifts in the geology and political economy of oil that, I argue, have created a new period of 'boom' and 'bust' in an industry historically reliant on stabalizing monopolist forces. Brought on by the plateauing of conventional oil production in 2004-2005, this new, chaotic, period has been characterized by unprecedented volatility(link is external), a spike in production costs for new, often unconventional, projects, and the emergence of hydraullic fracturing, with its anarchic, short-term, production cycle.

My work looks at how the flow of capital mediates the relationship between the non-renewable depletion of petroleum as a resource and the actual production of it as a critical global commodity. I am likewise interested in how the uncertain future of petroleum infuses projections of its future supply and demand, especially by authoritative actors, with newfound power. Finally, my research examines how the investment crisis in oil, and the new period of uncertainty, boom and bust, has impacted (and is impacted by) the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies.