Global energy investment “stabilised” at just over $1.8 trillion in 2018, ending three years of declines. Higher spending on oil, natural gas and coal was offset by declines in fossil fuel-based electricity generation and even a dip in renewable energy spending. China was the largest market for energy investment, even as the U.S. closed the gap. After the 2014-2016 oil market bust, spending on oil and gas plunged, and only started to tick up last year. But the oil industry is not returning to its old spending ways. New investment is increasingly concentrated in short-cycle projects, namely, U.S. shale, “partly reflecting investor preferences for better managing capital at risk amid uncertainties over the future direction of the energy system,” the IEA wrote in its report. Upstream spending rose by a modest 4 percent, which only partially repairs the savage cuts following the 2014 bust, which saw upstream spending fall […]