Oil demand to plummet

50% of OECD oil demand comes from road transport.  As the percentage of EVs in the car/light truck fleet rises, that sector of demand will dwindle.  By 2040 it will have disappeared completely. 

(The OECD represents developed countries, and excludes China.  However, demand for oil for transport is going to plunge in China too.)

With demand sliding faster every year, the only way for oil producers to keep the oil price up is to constrain supply.  But that's not a long term cure.  If you are like Saudi Arabia, with vast supplies and a low cost of production, it would make sense to sell as much as possible as soon as possible, before demand runs out, and you are left with a slew of stranded assets and unsellable reserves.   If, on the other hand, you have limited supply, and a high cost of production, you will also want to sell as much as possible as soon as possible, because when the oil price starts to fall, you'll be unable to produce it profitably.   

So the current supply constraint is almost certainly temporary and unsustainable.  Peak oil is imminent.

Source: Statista

Where Easter Monday is a public holiday

 From Statista

Easter Monday is a public holiday for many countries around the world. The following chart shows how most of Europe has the day off work, as well as Australia and several countries in Africa. The United States is notably one of the countries that does not enjoy the national holiday, despite the largest religion being Christianity.

In several countries, including Germany, Botswana and Australia, both Easter Friday and Easter Monday are given as a public holiday. The Danes and inhabitants of the Faroe Islands even have Maundy Thursday off, giving them a five day national break. In most Central and Southern American countries, which have large Catholic populations, the days before Easter - Good Friday and sometimes also the Thursday - are a public holiday rather than the Monday. For example, this is the case with Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Argentina, among others.

In the Armenian Apostolic Church, Easter Monday is known as a “Merelots”, which is a Remembrance Day of the Dead. Five Merelots take place a year in Armenia, in each case the day after a significant date of the religious calendar: after Christmas, Easter, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

In several countries in northern and central Europe, Easter Monday has its own traditions. For example, according to the U.S. embassy in the Czech Republic, one custom involves boys braiding willow branches and decorating them with colorful ribbons, before using them to "gently switch" their female friends as a symbol of luck and renewal.

Europe's reduced gas consumption

From Statista

To address reductions in Russian gas supplies since the start of the war in Ukraine, European Union countries had set a goal of reducing their natural gas consumption by 15 percent between August 2022 and March 2023 compared to the average of the past five years. In December, Eurostat announced that the EU is on track with that goal, with gas consumption in the EU-27 falling by about 20 percent over the August-November period (compared to the 2017-2021 average).

As this map details, over the period in question, gas consumption decreased in most member states. In 18 countries, including Germany (-20 percent), consumption has fallen beyond the 15 percent target and, in some cases, significantly: Finland (-53 percent), Latvia (-43 percent) and Lithuania (-42 percent) have seen the greatest reductions in consumption.

Although they have reduced their use of this energy source, 6 Member States have not yet reached the 15 percenttarget. In two countries, on the other hand, natural gas consumption has increased: in Malta (+7 percent) and Slovakia (almost +3 percent).

[The extraordinary warmth in the first part of winter will have helped]

 

Renewables soon to overtake coal

From Statista

With hundreds of protesters currently trying to halt the continued development of a coal mine in Germany - which would involve the destruction of the now abandoned village of Lützerath, the further pursuit of fossil fuels in a country ostensibly seeking to phase them out is under the spotlight. The main justification used by the German government is that the country's hand has been forced by the massive gap left by Russian oil and gas. At least in the short to medium term, coal has been selected is one answer to Germany's significant problem.

Longer term, it's renewables that are planned to dominate Germany's electricity mix, and this is something reflected by an International Energy Agency forecast. As this infographic shows, global use of coal for electricity generation outweighed that of renewables by 8 percentage points. By 2027, this is predicted to flip, with renewables accounting for 38 percent of global electricity production compared to 30 percent from coal.

The IEA report, released since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, says that the war has led countries "to increasingly value the energy security benefits of renewable energy." Although some of the shorter term solutions may be focused by necessity on fossil or nuclear sources, the future is looking more green. An additional factor in this ongoing shift quoted in the report were the "high fossil fuel and electricity prices resulting from the global energy crisis" that have "made renewable power technologies much more economically attractive".

My own opinion is that this transition will happen faster than the IEA thinks.  The IEA was founded to support fossil fuels and nuclear and it has consistently underestimated the speed of the transition to renewables, and the cost declines in wind and solar;  plus the advantages of reducing reliance on blood-thirsty petro-states have become obvious to governments.