The Ukraine crisis has prompted fears of disruption in Russian oil and gas exports. Spare oil production capacity is already under stress, and it will likely worsen as the crisis in Ukraine continues. Some analysts believe that “an oil supercycle is inevitable.” The world is short on spare oil production capacity. This became clear a while ago despite attempts to ignore it on the part of some governments of large consumer countries. The problem has once again come into the spotlight amid the Ukraine crisis, which has prompted fears of disruption in Russian oil and gas exports. “Spare capacity is falling and the [oil] market is having to reprice that lack of safety margin,” JP Morgan’s head of global energy strategy, Christyan Malek, told the Financial Times last week. The spare capacity problem has been highlighted repeatedly, by OPEC, the International Energy Agency, and numerous analysts. The result of […]