A few days ago, Facebook joined Twitter in embracing remote work as a permanent option for many of its employees. In a decade, Mark Zuckerberg said, half of the company’s employees could work from home. Now, let’s consider all the high-tech companies that could afford to keep half of their employees in the home office… and what this would do to oil demand. Oilprice.com’s Michael Kern raised the question in April, soon after WTI swung into negative territory for the first time ever. Transportation, he noted, accounts for more than two-thirds of oil demand in the United States. This makes it the single most critical factor for sustainable demand in the industry.
Within transportation, so-called light-duty vehicles, the kind that includes passenger cars that millions used for their daily commute, account for the biggest portion of oil demand, at 8.31 million barrels of oil equivalent daily. Freight trucks, for those interested, are a distant second, consuming some 2.8 million barrels of oil equivalent daily, according to Statista data for 2019.
When lockdowns effectively put an end to travel in March, the results were instant. In late March, the daily national traffic volume in the United States was down close to 40 percent from a month earlier. By mid-April, this was down 46 percent on a monthly basis before slightly improving towards the end of the month as lockdowns began to be eased. Chances are, traffic volumes will continue to improve from this point forward, with lockdowns lifted across the states.
But the question remains, will demand rebound fully? The answer may well be no.
An internal Facebook survey cited by the AP showed that one-fifth of employees was, “extremely or very interested” in shifting to full-time remote work. Another fifth was “somewhat interested.” The rest of the tech giant’s employees appear to want flexibility above all.
The results of this survey, if indicative of the general mood in the tech industry, may be alarming for oil demand. Facebook alone employs close to 45,000 people. Of course, not all of these commute by car. But, once again, Facebook is not the only company mulling over permanent remote work. Twitter, which employs some 4,900 people, told them all they could keep working from home if they wished to after the lockdowns were over. This effectively means a permanent change in work patterns. This permanent change in work patterns would unavoidably mean a lasting change in energy consumption.
A few days ago, Facebook joined Twitter in embracing remote work as a permanent option for many of its employees. In a decade, Mark Zuckerberg said, half of the company’s employees could work from home. Now, let’s consider all the high-tech companies that could afford to keep half of their employees in the home office… and what this would do to oil demand. Oilprice.com’s Michael Kern raised the question in April, soon after WTI swung into negative territory for the first time ever. Transportation, he noted, accounts for more than two-thirds of oil demand in the United States. This makes it the single most critical factor for sustainable demand in the industry.
Within transportation, so-called light-duty vehicles, the kind that includes passenger cars that millions used for their daily commute, account for the biggest portion of oil demand, at 8.31 million barrels of oil equivalent daily. Freight trucks, for those interested, are a distant second, consuming some 2.8 million barrels of oil equivalent daily, according to Statista data for 2019.
When lockdowns effectively put an end to travel in March, the results were instant. In late March, the daily national traffic volume in the United States was down close to 40 percent from a month earlier. By mid-April, this was down 46 percent on a monthly basis before slightly improving towards the end of the month as lockdowns began to be eased. Chances are, traffic volumes will continue to improve from this point forward, with lockdowns lifted across the states.
But the question remains, will demand rebound fully? The answer may well be no.
An internal Facebook survey cited by the AP showed that one-fifth of employees was, “extremely or very interested” in shifting to full-time remote work. Another fifth was “somewhat interested.” The rest of the tech giant’s employees appear to want flexibility above all.
The results of this survey, if indicative of the general mood in the tech industry, may be alarming for oil demand. Facebook alone employs close to 45,000 people. Of course, not all of these commute by car. But, once again, Facebook is not the only company mulling over permanent remote work. Twitter, which employs some 4,900 people, told them all they could keep working from home if they wished to after the lockdowns were over. This effectively means a permanent change in work patterns. This permanent change in work patterns would unavoidably mean a lasting change in energy consumption.
