In July 2020, just a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic started to spiral out of control, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden declared world oil demand may have passed its peak – all but condemning his company’s core business to eventual obscurity. “Demand will take a long time to recover if it recovers at all,” he told reporters after the Anglo-Dutch energy company reported a sharp drop in second-quarter profit. Van Beurden wasn’t alone in his gloomy view. Like much else during the pandemic, what was happening in fuel markets was unprecedented. Demand had fallen so sharply as people stopped travelling, the oil industry simply couldn’t cut production fast enough to match it. Worse, the fall in demand came as Russia and Saudi Arabia – the two most […]