Analyst Sees Oil and Gas Running Short of Cash as IEA Releases Energy Investment Update

Despite continuing growth in fossil fuel spending and record investment in coal, clean energy sources are becoming ever more dominant in a world that is expected to spend US$2.8 trillion on all forms of energy this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported last week.

The shift in financing still isn’t fast enough or deep enough to hit a net-zero emissions target by mid-century, the agency warns. But days after the IEA released its World Energy Investment 2023 report, a U.S. bank analyst was asking a question that would previously have been unthinkable: whether privately-owned oil and gas companies will run short of investment dollars to develop new extraction projects.

“Yes, there is a danger, or a risk at least, of a severely diminished ability to privately finance oil and gas projects,” Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at New York-based Citibank, told fossil newsletter Rigzone.

Morse’s assessment was more dire for the industry, more hopeful for a decarbonized future, than the IEA’s. But the Paris-based agency’s report, the latest in an annual series, shows clean energy spending outstripping fossil fuels for the fourth year in a row and growing 24% over the last two years, compared to 15% for oil, gas, and coal, with solar expected to surpass oil production investment for the first time.

Read more about the IEA's take on clean energy investment "pulling away" from fossil fuels...and the indications that the fossil industry is quietly getting the memo, even if they can't say it out loud.