Post-COVID-19 and globalization of oil and natural gas trade: Challenges, opportunities, lessons, regulations, and strategies

Summary The Coronavirus (COVID‐19) outbreak hit the global economy like a tsunami. Every aspect of human society, including the energy industry and market, is affected by this pandemic. The pandemic has affected prices, demand, supply, investment, and several other aspects of the energy sector, including the oil and gas industry. This article is aimed to analyze the impacts of COVID‐19 on the oil and gas industry and give a perspective of the post‐COVID‐19 oil and gas market. Results of this article show that COVID‐19 impacts the oil and gas industry. The short‐term impact is nearly 25% decrease in petroleum consumption, slowly recovering to its former amount and even growing more. The long‐term impacts are the 30% to 40% decrease in the CAPEX and R&D investments over the oil and gas market, which is a regional scale in the United States, caused oil exploitation projects to decrease from more than 800 in 2019 to 265 in 2021. And it is predicted to reduce the competitiveness of oil and gas vs other energy carriers such as ever price‐decreasing renewable energies. Thus, the oil and gas industry has to change rapidly before losing a substantial energy market share. Finally, this article discusses acknowledging oil and gas trade as a part of World trade organization (WTO/ECT) regulations. And considering it a general energy commodity. An act that reduces the freedom of action of oil‐exporting governments and great oil cartels and protects their interests in a globalizing competitive energy market.