Appearing at a panel discussion in Calgary as part of the World Petroleum Congress, the bosses of Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil have said they support the move to cleaner energy forms. However, they have insisted that for the coming decades, oil will continue to be a major part of the energy mix.
They argued that with the world increasingly demanding energy, trying to eliminate the consumption of oil too quickly would be perilous. Both ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods and Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser promoted carbon capture and storage as a means for mitigating the emissions, which result from the continued use of fossil fuels. Woods said that people seemed to be thinking wishfully in:
“…that we’re going to flip a switch and we’ll go from where we’re at today to where it will be tomorrow. No matter where demand gets to, if we don’t maintain some level of investment in the industry, you end up running short of supply, which leads to high prices.”
ExxonMobil, which also makes industrial products like Mobil hydraulic oil and gear oil, has been a pioneer in carbon capture technology, which many environmentalists are sceptical of, preferring instead to cut emissions by reducing the use of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, Nasser stated he was expecting a record level of demand for oil in the second half of the year, possibly as high as 104 million barrels per day (bpd), with this expected to reach 110 million bpd by the next decade. It’s clear that oil companies need to invest in developing new resources.
