WEAK DEMAND GROWTH
This is perhaps the hardest factor to actually quantify, and will be the subject of a future post or two. For now, the previous high-cost of energy resulted in a number of efficiency improvements and increased frugalness. For example, North Americans have been driving fewer per-driver miles in more efficient cars. Globally, demand growth in China and India has slowed down. Basically, because energy has been expensive people and companies have all been working on ways to get more output from fewer resources, and now that more resources are available they don’t need those resources, even at a cheaper price point.