Could a global recession ease the situation at the energy markets and lead to reduced energy prices?
If you have a global recession, it has an impact on energy demand. But the link between oil consumption and prices is not very strong, because in the transport sector, you have no alternative to oil in the short term. That’s why you see that even with higher prices, demand is quite robust worldwide. What does the IEA do to improve energy security? The collective response we have put in place among IEA members to manage disruptions is based on emergency stocks. If we look at stocks in IEA countries, we could live with a disruption of two million barrels per day for two years. That is quite a big amount of oil. With that we could compensate for the disruption of the entire Nigerian oil industry for two years. How important are politics? Could the OPEC or any other organization or government still influence oil and energy prices? In the short term, the ability of OPEC to cut prices seems limited, because they are producing at near full capacity. But still they have an influence. They have
