能源转型导致油价上涨

据今日油价3月9日报道，根据世界银行的一份报告，能源转型需要30亿吨金属和矿物。该报告还指出，到2050年，铜、锂、钴和石墨等材料的需求将增长500%。而其中一些金属(即铜)的市场已经接近供小于求的状态。

铜价接近2011年以来的纪录高位，一位分析师至少预计，在今年年底前，需求将超过供应。据Mining.com报道，斯通克斯公司的娜塔莉·斯科特-格雷(Natalie Scott-Gray)上个月表示，今年的需求将增长5%，而供应只会小幅增长2.3%。更长期的问题是，要实现更多的供应还需要一段时间。

据路透社报道，托克首席执行官杰里米?威尔(Jeremy Weir)在今年出版的《CERAWeek》表示:“我们发现，使用电动汽车，风力发电场和太阳能需要的铜量将高达五倍。但又生产更多的铜。”

威尔补充道，铜矿的开发需要5到10年的时间，这意味着在可预见的未来，铜矿的供应会更加紧张。这种情况与其他对能量转变至关重要的矿物相似。目前，钴价格也在上涨，因为市场预期需求上升将导致供应收紧。特斯拉(Tesla)的埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)最近签署了一项协议，让该公司担任新喀里多尼亚(New Caledonia) Goro矿的技术顾问，以确保镍(另一种关键的电池金属)的长期供应。

任何东西的需求增长500%对投资者来说都是好消息，因此随着铜和镍等贱金属价格上涨，金属和矿产投资者的牛市即将到来。但随着铜和镍价格的上涨，与之配套的产品的价格也将上涨，尤其是电动汽车，这是能源转型的关键。随着汽车制造商和电池制造商不断降低生产成本，电动汽车被吹捧为越来越便宜的汽车。但如果任何电池组件的价格因金属原料短缺而大幅上涨，这些生产成本削减将被抵消。

基础金属价格问题的根源在于:多年来，由于基础金属价格疲软，该行业一直受到投资不足的困扰，而这些金属价格疲软是供应充裕的结果，因为需求驱动力总是相同的：制造业、建筑业、电信业、电力设施（铜），不锈钢生产（镍）和建筑业。

目前，全球镍需求中只有4%来自电动汽车行业，而70%来自不锈钢生产行业。但据预测，电动汽车的普及将导致电动汽车的需求份额在明年从4%增加到10%，并在2030年进一步增加到20%。这是一个非常急速的增长，不可避免地会导致价格飙升，因为产量还没有跟上。

铜的前景相对而言较乐观。BFI Capital Group在概述能源转型时引用的标准普尔全球市场情报的一份报告显示，自1990年以来，全球共发现了224处大型铜矿。然而，这些发现中只有16个是在过去10年里发现的，其中只有一个是在2015年之后发现的。这意味着勘探环境的萧条导致了未来铜供应的下降，这意味着铜短缺即将出现。

说到勘探低迷和投资不足，石油市场也面临供应短缺，尽管石油这种大宗商品已经从光明的前景中跌落。在过去10年里，两次油价暴跌导致了勘探活动的萎缩，而第二次危机还伴随着一场大范围的需求崩溃，进一步降低了该行业对新勘探活动的兴趣。其结果是:根据法国的统计，在短短五年内，世界每天将需要比现在多1000万桶的石油。

道达尔并不是唯一一家发出供应短缺警告的公司。美国石油协会(American Petroleum Institute)最近表示，投资不足和自然枯竭的共同作用，最快将在明年导致石油短缺。当然，API是一个行业组织，所以人们会期待它发出这样的警告，但着眼长远，短缺的原因也很容易看到。在2014年和2020年危机期间，所有石油行业都削减了对新勘探的投资。去年，由于需求的崩溃，许多公司甚至不得不减少现有的产量。

如今，由于能源转型，石油前景比以往更加黯淡，许多公司，尤其是大型石油巨头，正计划继续减产。与此同时，需求下降的速度并不像能源转型倡导者希望的那样快，尤其是在严重依赖化石燃料的发展中国家。作为全球石油需求最大的推动者之一，印度已经警告称，欧佩克维持产量上限的决定将损害其经济复苏。

因此，在未来十年左右的时间里，我们所期待的很可能是更昂贵的电动汽车、更昂贵的太阳能和风力发电场，因为铜在这些可再生能源系统中占有重要地位，讽刺的是，还有更昂贵的石油。

王佳晶 摘译自 今日油价

原文如下：

Energy Transition Leads To Higher Oil Prices, Metals Shortage

Three billion tons: this is how much metals and minerals the energy transition will require, according to a World Bank report. Demand for some of these, such as copper, lithium, cobalt, and graphite, is set to increase 500 percent by 2050, according to the same report. And the market for some of them—namely copper—is already near a deficit.

Copper prices are close to record highs last seen in 2011, and one analyst at least expects demand to exceed supply before this year’s end. Demand, Natalie Scott-Gray from StoneX said last month, as quoted by Mining.com, will rise by 5 percent this year while supply will only inch up by 2.3 percent. The longer-term problem is that additional supply takes time to come.

“We see the use of electric vehicles, wind farms and solar requires up to five times the amount of copper,” Jeremy Weir, chief executive of Trafigura, said at this year’s edition of CERAWeek, as quoted by Reuters. “You can’t turn on the switch and produce more copper.”

Weir added that copper mines take between five and ten years to develop, which means a tighter supply in the observable future. The situation is similar to other minerals that are essential for the energy transition. Cobalt prices are on the rise, too, at the moment, because of expectations that supply will tighten due to rising demand. And Tesla’s Elon Musk recently inked a deal to make the company a technical adviser at the Goro mine in New Caledonia to secure its long-term nickel supply—another key battery metal.

A 500-percent increase in demand for anything is certainly good news for investors in that thing, so bullish times are ahead for metals and minerals investors as the prices of base metals such as copper and nickel rise. But as copper and nickel prices rise, so will the price of the products made with them, notably EVs, on which much of the energy transition hinges. EVs are being touted as increasingly affordable as carmakers and battery makers continually reduce production costs. But if the price of any battery components jumps significantly due to a shortage, these production cost cuts will be wiped out.

The root of what could become a serious price problem with base metals lies in the past: for years, the industry has been plagued by underinvestment due to weak base metal prices, and these weak metal prices were the result of abundant supply because the demand drivers were always the same: manufacturing, construction, telecoms, and power utilities for copper, and stainless steel production and construction for nickel.

Right now, just 4 percent of the global demand for nickel comes from the electric vehicle industry, while 70 percent comes from the stainless steel production industry. But the forecast boom in EV adoption will lead to an increase in the share of demands from 4 to 10 percent by next year and further to 20 percent by 2030. This is a very sharp and very quick increase that will inevitably cause price spikes as production has yet to catch up.

The outlook is even more bullish for copper. Since 1990, there have been as many as 224 major new discoveries of copper deposits, according to a report by S&P Global Market Intelligence cited in a BFI Capital Group overview of the energy transition. Yet only 16 of these discoveries were made in the last ten years, with only one made since 2015. This means a depressed exploration environment that has led to a decline in future supply, which means a shortage is looming large on the horizon.

Speaking of depressed exploration and underinvestment, the oil market is also facing a shortage despite the commodity’s fall from grace into deep disgrace as the ultimate reason for the sorry state in which the Earth’s atmosphere appears to be. Two price crashes in the past ten years caused shrinking exploration, with the second crisis also accompanied by a pandemic that led to a historic demand collapse, further reducing the industry’s appetite for new exploration. The result: in just five years, the world will need 10 million bpd more oil than it has, according to French Total.

Total is not the only one warning of a shortage. The American Petroleum Institute recently said that the combination of underinvestment and natural depletion will result in a shortage as soon as next year. Of course, the API is an industry organization, so one would expect such a warning from it, but the makings of a shortage are easy to see from a distance, too. Everyone in oil cut their investments in new exploration during the 2014 and the 2020 crisis. Last year many even had to reduce existing production because of the collapse in demand.

Now, with the prospects for oil grimmer than before because of the energy transition, many, notably Big Oil majors, are planning to continue reducing their production. Demand, meanwhile, is not declining as fast as energy transition advocates might want it to decline, especially in developing nations that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. India, one of the biggest drivers of global oil demand, has already warned that the OPEC+ decision to keep production caps in place will hurt its economic recovery.

So, what we have to look forward to in the coming decade or so may well be more expensive EVs and more expensive solar and wind farms, since copper features heavily in these renewable energy systems, and, ironically, more expensive oil.