This week we have some fun with some Bloomberg pictures we created that highlight the information one can sometimes glean about traditional energy from other commodity markets like copper and other metals and minerals. Through the first half of the 2000s super-cycle, we used to spend a bunch of time looking at copper, steel, and iron ore for hints on what was going on with China, global oil demand, and broader macro conditions. Like oil, those other areas are plays on global GDP growth and infrastructure expansion, CAPEX if you will.
Today, we think we are in the early days of another one of those cycles via the combination of AI & digital transformation, expanding energy access, and growing geopolitical competition when it comes to both industrial restoring and also military. We see each of those trends contributing to a virtuous GDP cycle.
In the five pictures we go through today, we show that AI & tech started the trend, which then spread to power markets and most recently to copper and other metals. We think oil markets will be the next to benefit. Our base case view has been that oil is in a bottoming phase characterized by perhaps modest oversupply in 1H2026 but no oil glut, and that the next upcycle takes hold either later this year or 2027. Either way, now is the time for energy companies to be thinking about where they want to take risk in order to drive shareholder value for the decade ahead.