Innovations in energy storage, smart grid, and electricity generation technologies will affect every part of the source-to-consumer supply chain for powering the planet.

So far in 2017 a number of global energy experts and commodities watchers have looked beyond the current reporting period and they see a growing long term demand for oil and gas.

Speaking this week at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York, Total SA's chief energy economist, Joel Couse, forecasted that EVs will make up 15 to 30 percent of global new vehicle sales by 2030.

The biggest banks remain bullish on oil prices, but analyst projections about global supply and demand are increasingly diverging.

Globally, exploratory drilling fell by almost 20 percent in 2015 and fell even further in 2016. Russia's exploration activities, suffered a double blow during this period.

If oil demand were to reach an actual peak, then the top might be easier to predict. As it stands, the forecast models of demand are likely predicting peak demand far later than it will be.

The two U.S. utilities with the most at risk are Southern Company and SCANA Corp.

After rising aggressively, some would argue that lithium prices have already peaked.

Analysts and experts are now mostly predicting that oil prices will remain below US$60 this year.

The oil majors reported poor earnings for the fourth quarter of last year, but many oil executives struck an optimistic tone about the road ahead

U.S. oil inventories are at record levels, but there are a few glimmers of hope that the glut could be starting to subside.

Canada’s oil sands could struggle to rebound, with potentially billions of barrels of oil being kept underground permanently.