Oil is still king

Traditional fossil fuels will continue to rule the global energy mix for the next 30 to 40 years, the president and CEO of Saudi Aramco told the World Energy Congress during yesterday’s keynote address at the Palais des congres.

The growth of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency technologies will be “slow and uneven” due to a range of factors, including consumer-acceptance issues, Khalid Al-Falih said.

“The world will continue to rely on traditional fossil fuels for most of its energy needs for the coming decades,” Al-Falih told the congress, which is expected to attract about 5,000 participants before it wraps up Thursday.

“These energy sources -namely coal, oil and natural gas -are expected to account for about four out of every five units of energy that mankind will consume for the foreseeable future.”

Although the share of fossil fuels in the energy mix may decline over the longer term, the absolute quantities of energy from those sources will rise “simply because total energy demand is set to expand so significantly,” he said.

Saudi Aramco has oil reserves of about 260 billion barrels, roughly one-fifth of the world’s proven reserves which, at the company’s current rate of production, are enough for more than 80 years of production, the conference heard.

Those reserves are expected to grow by an additional 40 per cent, he said.

Saudi Aramco’s proven gas reserves of 276 trillion cubic feet are the fifth-largest in the world and are growing.

The lion’s share of the company’s capital program will be directed to the gas sector and the downstream oil sector,

There are “significant opportunities to make petroleum more environmentally friendly including carbon capture and sequestration, he told the conference.

Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, told the congress that the natural gas revolution is changing the global energy landscape.

Improved production technologies have made it economical to produce shale gas and tight gas resources, said Voser, whose shale gas plays in North America include a project in northeast British Columbia.

“Worldwide, there’s now enough technically recoverable gas in the ground for 250 years … at current production rates,” Voser told the conference.

Shell is aware of public concern regarding hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique used to stimulate gas flow, and takes that concern seriously, said Voser, who outlined measures taken to protect groundwater.

“This is not to suggest that nothing could ever go wrong. We’ve recently been reminded that things sometimes can and do go wrong.

“But let’s also remember that energy is the lifeblood of civilization. Whether we like it or not, producing energy … and delivering it to billions of customers around the world comes with certain risks.

“Rather than closing our eyes to that reality, we must confront risks and manage them as effectively as we can. That requires good safety standards and well-trained people,” he said.

The appetite for natural gas is growing, said Voser, who pegged current demand at 3.1 trillion cubic metres. “At Shell, our view is that global gas demand could rise by one-quarter by 2020 and by almost 50 per cent by 2030,” he said.
Montreal Gazette