The scale of the socio-economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy has not been witnessed since the Great Depression. Isolation measures, implemented across the globe to contain the virus, confined hundreds of millions of people into their homes, bringing economic activities to a standstill. This crisis has impacted the oil and gas industry in an unprecedented manner. A massive decline in oil demand and a large oversupply, intensified by the price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, has sent oil prices to levels unseen in decades. While the oil industry has faced several crises that have pushed it to find new ways to conduct business and adapt to changing conditions, the Covid-induced crisis has come when the industry is dealing with increased shareholder activism and intense pressure on the environmental front. Since this is a new phase for the industry, it could also become the catalyst that accelerates the transformation it has started to go through. Oil will continue to play an essential role in the energy mix for many decades. However, oil companies will have to navigate and manage an uncertain future as oil and gas projects will be riskier to develop and consequently require a higher rate of return. They will have to diversify their portfolios and continue shifting toward an integrated business model that embraces the changes caused by the energy transition and the growth in renewable and new technologies.

Despite long standing concern by policy makers, U.S. oil imports have generally increased for decades. This book explores U.S. oil sources with a focus on the U.S.-Canada energy relationship; the Keystone XL Pipeline project; Middle East and North Africa unrest and the implications for oil and natural gas markets; Egypt's turmoil on the global oil and natural gas supply; hedge fund speculation and oil prices; and, The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and Refined Product Reserves Act.

This book develops new econometric models to analyze and forecast the world market price of oil. The authors construct ARIMA and Trend models to forecast oil prices, taking into consideration outside factors such as political turmoil and solar activity on the price of oil. Incorporating historical and contemporary market trends, the authors are able to make medium and long-term forecasting results. In the first chapter, the authors perform a broad spectrum analysis of the theoretical and methodological challenges of oil price forecasting. In the second chapter, the authors build and test the econometric models needed for the forecasts. The final chapter of the text brings together the conclusions they reached through applying the models to their research. This book will be useful to students in economics, particularly those in upper-level courses on forecasting and econometrics as well as to politicians and policy makers in oil-producing countries, oil importing countries, and relevant international organizations.