Aramco CEO calls for energy transition reset during keynote speech at CERAWeek 2024
DHAHRAN: Aramco President and CEO Amin H. Nasser today emphasized the need for a new, realistic pathway for the energy transition that includes oil and gas. In a keynote speech at CERAWeek 2024 in Houston, Texas, Nasser said the current transition strategy “is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities.”
These hard realities include the need to reset global efforts to meet climate ambitions, the inability of alternatives so far to displace hydrocarbons at scale, the costs associated with alternatives, energy requirements of the Global South, and the potential for further emissions reductions from hydrocarbons.
On reducing emissions from oil and gas, Nasser said: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately, reflecting realistic demand assumptions. We should ramp up our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, aggressively improve efficiency, and introduce lower carbon solutions. And we should phase in new energy sources and technologies when they are genuinely ready, economically competitive, and with the right infrastructure.”
On the energy transition’s impact on consumers, Nasser said: “As the current transition strategy increasingly impacts the majority, not just a tiny minority, consumers around the world are sending powerful messages that can no longer be ignored. We know they want energy with lower emissions, and rightly so. But many are struggling to afford the energy they need. And they worry about ample and reliable supply, which the recent energy crisis showed is not guaranteed … Unfortunately, the current transition strategy overlooks these broader messages from consumers. It focuses almost exclusively on replacing hydrocarbons with alternatives, more on sources than on reducing emissions.”
On the demand outlook for hydrocarbons, Nasser said: “Despite the world investing more than $9.5 trillion on energy transition over the past two decades, alternatives have been unable to displace hydrocarbons at scale… Global oil demand is expected to reach an all-time high in the second half of this year … Likewise, gas remains a mainstay of global energy, growing by about almost 70 percent since the start of the century … All this strengthens the view that peak oil and gas is unlikely for some time to come.”
CERAWeek is an annual conference that gathers leaders, ministers, public-policy officials and CEOs from around the world to share insights, innovative ideas and solutions to energy, climate and environmental challenges. More than 8,000 representatives of the energy, utilities, automotive, manufacturing, policy, financial, and technology fields attend CERAWeek, which features more than 1,400 expert speakers.
Aramco CEO calls for energy transition reset during keynote speech at CERAWeek 2024 ( arabnews.com )
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CERAWeek — Industry leaders say scarcity of gas a greater worry
HOUSTON:?Energy industry leaders said the burgeoning energy crisis is perhaps more dire in natural gas markets than in crude oil, due to Europe’s dependency on Russia and as prices have been sky-high for months.
Panelists at this year’s CERAWeek conference in Houston have stressed a greater need for secure energy supply. While world crude markets have been roiled by the US decision to stop importing Russian oil, Asian and European gas markets have been in turmoil since last year as Russia slowed pipeline flows.
“Clearly what is happening in Europe is the problem of scarcity of gas. It’s not oil,” Gabriel Obiang Lima, Equatorial Guinea’s minister of hydrocarbons said at the conference.
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, shipping out roughly 23 billion cubic feet of gas every day, of which about 90 percent goes to Europe or Eurasia, with about half of that going to Germany, Italy, France and Belarus.
The US led an effort early in the year to secure more supply via liquefied natural gas cargoes for Europe earlier, US State Department Senior Adviser Amos Hochstein told the audience in Houston on Tuesday.
He said that energy “is the card (Russian President Vladimir) Putin thinks he has to intimidate his neighbors.” The US is the world’s top gas producer, however, currently exports just about all it can in LNG — about 12.6 bcfd, which it sends to destinations across Europe and Asia.
“There’s just no additional LNG that’s coming online to bridge the gap for the gas that’s going to be needed by Europe next year — and it was cold in Asia, and Asia has no other alternative,” said Michael Smith, founder and chief executive of Freeport LNG.
A source familiar with the White House’s thinking said the Biden administration is mulling how much to cooperate with the US natural gas industry, wary that any outreach would be seen by environmentalists as a capitulation on efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
While the EU has not elected to stop buying Russian gas — Russia is still sending gas to Europe via the original Nord Stream 1 pipeline — Britain on Tuesday said it will phase out purchases of Russian oil and gas by the end of the year.
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CERAWeek 2022 — Aramco CEO says Ukraine invasion has accelerated global energy crisis
RIYADH: Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser on Tuesday said the “tragic situation unfolding in Ukraine is making the global energy crisis worse.”
Nasser, speaking at CERAWeek in Houston, echoed other energy executives in saying that the crisis exposes the mixed signals delivered by policymakers to the oil-and-gas industry amid the energy transition.
“As oil and gas investments are discouraged,?demands are being placed on our industry to increase production,” he said.
Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said Tuesday the mixed signals from policymakers are making the crisis worse.
The Aramco chief said: “All energy resources will be needed to support a successful transition, and the demonization of our industry is not helping.”
“We need consensus on the essential role of oil and gas with lower emissions, working side-by-side with alternatives to meet the rising global call on energy and deliver on net-zero ambitions.”
Nasser also said?the Ukraine crisis has exposed limitations of current energy policies and is a bleak reminder of the impact of geopolitics on the fragile energy transition.
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President/CEO at Francium Strategies LLC
4 个月Thank you for sharing!
Pr. Sci. Nat.| Geophysicist| Director| Strategic Advisor| Speaker | Project Manager
8 个月The reality in the numbers is clear. Oil and Gas industry is here to stay for a whole lot longer similarly to mining. The narratives about transition have to be recalibrated to match the daily reality.
What is striking in this sequence of comments is how apparently shy of the mark western leadership and its responsible strategic planners were in effecting over an extended period what clearly were, in the event, effective energy security policy and programs. It appears that, if one goes by current developments, some leaders in the west were particularly vulnerable to being maneuvered and manipulated by what clearly emerges as a vulnerable and inferior position to that of what is a very aggressive opponent that will use whatever means and force deemed necessary to obtain objectives. The latter increasingly represent severe compromise of Europe's and the larger global community's situation if achieved. It seems increasingly apparent that western leadership still has much work to do to operate and sustain position in competition with a opposing leadership that weaponizes almost every aspect possible to gain advantage in operations short of war in sustained "gray zone" operations and is then prepared when it deems it necessary to escalate to large scale employment of force in campaigns of aggression to further its progress toward set strategic objectives.