Pandemic. Deep freeze. Decarbonization. Stymied production growth. Sky-high prices. 2021 was definitely one for the record books. But thank goodness we made it and can look forward to a New Year! That means it is time for our annual Top 10 Energy Prognostications, the long-standing RBN tradition where we consider what’s coming next to energy markets. Say what? Surely it would be foolhardy to make predictions now. After all, we’re in the midst of a chaotic energy transition, a pandemic that’s becoming endemic, and political shenanigans in Washington and across the globe. Foolhardy? Nah. All we need to do is stick out our collective RBN necks one more time, peer into our crystal ball, and see what 2022 has in store for us.
Ten years. Wow. That’s how long we’ve been posting RBN Prognostications. That makes 100 individual predictions! Sometimes we’re right, sometimes wrong. But never bashful. And darn it, a few of our misses would have come to pass if some wayward black swan like a global pandemic or once-a-century weather event hadn’t come along. Anyway, it’s always instructive to see what percolates to the top of our prognostications listing. You can check out how we did last year in our Prognostications Scorecard, which was posted last Friday.
And now it’s time for our 2022 Prognostications, with a view forward that seems somewhat less hazy than a year ago. So let’s see what could be ahead for energy markets.
2022 – Year of the Tiger
Way back when we first started our Prognostications blogs, we needed all the help we could get to see into the future. And so we consulted the Chinese zodiac. It’s been a very useful analytical tool. In 2015, after Shale Era’s first oil price crash, we had Year of the Goat — oil was certainly the goat that year. 2016 was Year of the Monkey — a lot of monkey business going on then. 2018 was Year of the Dog, and we asked, “Who let the dogs out?” We were getting greedy in 2019, Year of the Pig. And of course, 2020 was Year of the Rat and 2021 Year of the Ox. So how about 2022?
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