Learning from oil’s supercycle miss

Mistaken assumptions around an oil bull run that never happened are a warning over the talk of a supply glut

Five years ago, alarm bells were ringing across the oil market. Analysts at leading banks warned that the world was sleepwalking towards a major supply shortfall by the mid-2020s—a structural deficit driven not by geology but capital starvation. The thesis was simple: persistent, ESG-compelled underinvestment in long-cycle non-OPEC, non-US supply would bite just as growth from US shale began to taper off on inevitable geological and productivity limits. The shortfall never materialised. Fast forward to 2025, and the narrative has been flipped on its head. Global production sits at c.106m b/d and is forecast to rise to 110–115m b/d by the mid-2030s, according to the US Energy Information Admi