1. The 2020 Oil Crash’s Unlikely Winner: Saudi Arabia
- Author:
- Jason Bordoff
- Publication Date:
- 05-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
- Abstract:
- With 4 billion people around the world under lockdown as the coronavirus pandemic grows, demand for gasoline, jet fuel, and other petroleum products is in freefall, as are oil prices. The price of a barrel of crude has been so low in the United States that sellers recently had to pay people to take it off their hands. As a result, oil-dependent economies are reeling. In the United States, the largest oil producer in the world, the number of rigs drilling for oil has plummeted 50 percent in just two months, almost 40 percent of oil and gas producers could be insolvent within the year, and 220,000 oil workers are projected to lose their jobs. Around the world, petrostates from Nigeria to Iraq to Kazakhstan are struggling and their currencies tanking. Some, like Venezuela, face an economic and social abyss. While 2020 will be remembered as a year of carnage for oil nations, however, at least one will most likely emerge from the pandemic stronger, both economically and geopolitically: Saudi Arabia.
- Topic:
- Energy Policy, Oil, Natural Resources, and Gas
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf Nations