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Davos – Global Energy Outlook
World Economic Forum
Despite the major decline in energy prices from their peak in 2008, energy security concerns have increased as major producing and consuming economies differ significantly on how to develop a more secure and stable energy system.
How can producers and consumers develop mutually beneficial approaches to energy security?
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(28 Jan 2010)
Davos 2010: a new peak in oil production is needed, energy leaders argue
Kamal Ahmed, The Telegraph
At a meeting of oil leaders at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Tony Hayward, group chief executive of BP, said that there was a “supply challenge” for the industry which would have to increase output to 100mbd – a new peak for oil. Mr Hayward said that at present the world was producing between 83 and 84mbd.
He said he hoped Iraq would become a major oil player, producing up to 10mbd in the next decade if the political situation remains relatively stable.
A need for a new peak in oil production will dismay environmental campaigners who hoped that the West’s declining reliance on oil would mean less CO2 emissions. Instead, demand from the emerging economies, including India and the other BRIC countries, China, Russia and Brazil, will lead to new record levels of consumption.
Mr Hayward’s comments were supported by Peter Voser, the chief executive of Shell, who said that the industry would have to find up to $27trn of investment over the next 20 years to meet demand.
He also argued that although renewables would be able to supply some of the increase, there needed to be a “more balanced discussion between oil and renewables” and that increasing gas supply had a lot of potential.
“There is plenty of gas. Here we have an energy source which from a CO2 point of view is better than other fuels – than for example coal for electricity generation.”…
(28 Jan 2010)
Conflicting views over ‘peak oil’
RTE Business
The head of Saudi oil giant Aramco has tried to ease international concerns over dwindling stocks of oil.
Khalid al Falih, Aramco’s chairman and chief executive, hit out at ‘misleading’ rhetoric that the world was weaning itself off fossil fuels, saying this did not give producers confidence to keep investing in production.
The head of the world’s biggest producer company was speaking at a World Economic Forum session on the global energy outlook in Davos. ‘We don’t believe in peak oil,’ he told reporters later.
But other petrol bosses remained unconvinced. ‘The problem of peak oil remains,’ said Thierry Desmarest, chairman of French giant Total. Mr Desmarest said it would be very difficult to raise oil production worldwide above 95 million barrels a day, which is 10% more than today’s level.
The problem is not one of insufficient reserves, but that ‘a lot of it is difficult to be produced,’ he said. Mr Desmarest told the AFP news agency that world oil production could peak in about 10 years…
(28 Jan 2010)
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