As the sun sets on fossil energy industry worldwide, due to crash in oil prices (currently fluctuating between $45 and $55 per barrel) largely instituted by the move of the Saudi oligarchs, who flooded the energy scene with cheap barrels of oil to spite neighbor Iran.
This has had tremendous effect across board, with several oil dependent countries bearing the brunt of the present situation, particularly oil producing and exporting countries whose yearly budgets are benchmarked based on international price of oil per barrel. This, thus shows again how susceptible countries economy can be hit without warning due to simple fluctuation in the oil prices in the international market.
The effect is always far reaching, with economic rebase taking the order of the day, in form of austerity measures, borrowing sprees, job losses to cut over-heads and so on. Perhaps, it is time to start immunizing the world's economic activities from fossil energy's fortune and misfortune, but being a cheap energy source with most of the world's energy consumption systems (Transportation, Industries, Electricity Generation) favoring its continuous utilization, it becomes an extremely dicey situation and perhaps more tricky when taking into consideration the current challenges and imperfection of the renewable and green energy sources.
As history always repeats itself, there will always be a boom and burst season, provided the international market and other volatile event continue to determine the price of purchase of the primary energy source being utilized worldwide. Having said that, what can we proffer as solution to this planet earths' energy problem, the good news is there are various solutions to tackle this incessant problem, the sad news is, it's a multi-faced hydra which cannot be tackled easily without system overhaul which costs fortunes, behavioral overhaul which costs education and political will to make and sustain unpopular policies which costs allies.
To be continued....
Ibraheem B. Kolawole BEng, MSc is a Civil Engineer, Energy advocate/analyst and Part-time blogger
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