Liam Denning, Columnist

"Lower-Forever" Oil Isn't Forever-Ever

Shell, Saudi Arabia and more need a thriftier future even if prices do recover.

August 1, 2017 at 5:50 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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Ask the CEO of an oil company where they think the price of their main product is going, and the usual response is a deeply unsatisfying variation on "I dunno."

That isn't the main reason why Royal Dutch Shell PLC's chief executive drew a collective gasp with his "lower forever" comment about the market last week. But it is worth remembering when it comes to interpreting what Ben Van Beurden meant.