Today’s energy industry has numerous shifts in terms of trying to understand and make work the constantly changing dynamics of the world’s oil resources, out of control energy demands, and geopolitical patterns. These are often determined by complex currents in the oil and gas production strategies of the major industry players. Resources are now limited by such things as number of functional refineries and their capacity to produce, as well as crude processing plants, aging and reduced offshore drilling rigs, and new regulations in environment control.
The energy cash flow has also seen more and more being ear marked for new and unconventional energy resources. Things like wind turbines and other non-hydro energy sources are expected to make up 6% of the world’s energy by the year 2030. New sources of investment have also begun influencing the energy industry with larger and more diversified companies seeking a larger integration and consolidation into this sector.
Worldwide when we look at the energy industry we see more and more that energy and utility companies are going public and in so doing face less state control which moves them into a free market position. In fact the energy industry leads the way over such industries as waste disposal, water and other once considered state run industries. This does have its drawbacks as it affects finance, performance, administration, regulations, taxes and marketing and information technologies.
As the world develops globally the increase in energy consumption will no doubt be the new growth driver for the world energy markets. Statistics show that in the Asian countries such as China and India energy demands will jump to almost a 100% increase by the year 2025.
When it comes to the largest energy consumer, and for that matter importer, the United States continues to be number one. It is ranked 11th in worldwide reserves, 6th in natural gas reserves and 1st in coal. The United States still depends mainly on fossil fuel such as coal, natural gas or crude oil for all their energy needs. It has not been since the 1950’s that the US domestic production of energy has been greater than domestic usage.