The Coming Collapse: What Economists Miss About Oil And The Global Economy

The supply and demand model of economists suggests that oil prices might rise to consistently high levels, but this has not happened yet: Figure 1. Average annual Brent equivalent inflation-adjusted crude oil prices, based on data of the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute. The last year shown is 2024. In my view, the economists’ model of supply and demand is overly simple; its usefulness is limited to understanding short-term shifts in oil prices. The supply and demand model of economists does…