Future developments in energy and oil markets will be driven by number of factors. The critical ones include population growth, changing demographics, and the assumed path of economic growth, policy changes, technology advancements and energy & oil prices. For population growth, this is expected to expand at an unprecedented low rate compared to the previous century. Moreover, the growth rate is anticipated to see a further deceleration as the outlook moves to 2040. At the same time, the world continues to age as fertility rates decline and people live longer across the world. In addition, more people are moving from country-to-country, as well as increasingly to urban areas. Global population is estimated to increase from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 9.2 billion in 2040. The additional 1.8 billion people will mainly come from Developing countries. In the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) region, population is forecast to increase by 116 million people in the period to 2040 partly supported by immigration. The share of the global working age population (that is, individuals aged between 15 and 64 years) peaked in 2012, following a steady increase since 1970. Individuals aged 65 or more are anticipated to account for 14% of the world population in 2040, up from today's level of 8%. Children are estimated to represent 22% of the population by 2040, down from 26% today.
Through the use of smart contracts, we can now replace paper and complex legal agreements that are cumbersome, difficult to transfer and can be hard to track for the average person and even for sophisticated investors. Our solution for commodity investing (mainly in oil) would be to switch to a digital system along the lines of Bitcoin but linked to an asset. This solution is the PERMIAN Token (XPR). Imagine a vault of oil barrels. The oil barrels are owned by ""Oil-owner Inc."" and the vault is owned by ""Vault Inc."" Vault Inc. has a spectacular reputation and third-party auditors who verify the amount of oil barrels in its vault. Oil-owner Inc. could offer a digital token to the public that represents ownership of the oil barrels and through a smart contract with Vault Inc. maintain a public off-chain registry that relates fractional interest in the gold with the tokens. For every token sold, Oil-owner Inc. transfers ownership to Vault Inc., who holds it on behalf of the token owner. Vault Inc. guarantees redemption of the value price of oil barrels by anyone who can prove ownership through a digital signature. Oil-owner Inc. can take advantage of the fact that Vault Inc. is trusted (and audited). Owners of the tokens rely on Vault Inc.'s representations and not on Oil-owner Inc. (even though Oil-owner Inc. is the token issuer). One of the main advantages would be that buyers of the tokens could know that they are the only person who has received the token, whereas a buyer of a paper certificate has no way of knowing that the same certificate hasn't been sold to multiple people.