CEO’s have been doing the rounds at the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, giving their views on everything from Gulf investment to the role of gas in delivering energy for the future. Here are some highlights from the men at the top:
The economic crisis
Bob Dudley, BP: “Right now we are probably walking a fine line[…] there is a risk that the United States could be hit by high oil prices.” Dudley said the US is particularly vulnerable and that any slowdown in the U.S. economy would inevitably weigh on global growth.
Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil: “In the current economic climate the need to make the right policy choices is critical […] We must engage in long-term planning, undeterred by the episodic ups and downs of regional and global economic performance.”
Gas
Jim Mulva, ConocoPhillips: “Gas is clean, abundant and doesn’t need a miracle – it has already happened […] The shale gas revolution is creating new jobs, by the thousands, from new resources […] U.S. gas reserves are up 65% since the mid-1990s, and still rising […] ConocoPhillips is conducting a public information campaign on natural gas. Some of our peer companies are doing the same. Regardless of what countries we call home, we must all engage in a global effort to earn the trust of the public and government.”
‘Peak oil’
Antonio Brufau, Repsol: “The speed at which technology changes and its consequences have taken us largely by surprise. The peak oil debate, for example, has lost a great deal of its relevance in the past three years […] The possibility that usable resources under commercially viable terms will run out is no longer a concern in the short or medium term.”
Oil demand
Bob Dudley: “The numbers are stark … That is the equivalent of adding another Chinaand another United States to demand. And our latest data show that demand profile is holding up even at this time of economic uncertainty,” “Since existing fields are declining and will only yield just over 50 million barrels by 2030, our industry needs to add roughly a Saudi Arabia’s worth of extra production capacity every five years,”
Peter Voser, Shell: Demand for energy in 2050 could be around three times that of 2000. While efficiency gains can realistically be expected to moderate this demand by around 20 %, and the oil and gas industry supplying another 50% “this would still leave an enormous gap between supply and demand, more or less equivalent in size to the global energy industry as it stood in the year 2000.”
65-70 million additional barrels per day of oil production will be needed to bridge the gap.
“That’s equivalent to nearly two OPECs of additional supply, not to mention the additional capacity we need to bring on stream to absorb the underlying production decline.”
Sources: Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires, Platts)
