So oil prices crawled off their 11-year low overnight – big whoop. Such gyrations are merely part of the present tussle between supply and demand. There's a more serious problem hanging over the oil price that won't be solved by capping a few wells.

Passing remarks in a social setting made to me by a former oil industry CEO and current chairman provided some insight into the growing despair about price: uncertainty about how much of the current plunge is merely the cycle, or something structural.

In either event, he thought it was only a matter of time before oil went the way coal is going.

Extrapolating his thinking, what worries hydrocarbon producers isn't just the surge in production meeting lack-lustre demand thanks to slower global economic growth - it's the way renewables are becoming cheaper as the technology rapidly improves, chasing oil, gas and coal prices down.