2024-03-21 02:55:38
Top executives from oil companies including Petrobras, Saudi Aramco, Shell, and Woodside Energy opposed calls for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and said society would pay a high price to replace oil at the CERAWeek 2024 energy conference in Houston, Texas. and gas. This was reported by Reuters, Day.Az reports with reference to TASS.
“We must abandon fantasies of phasing out oil and gas, and instead invest adequately in them to meet demand,” the agency quotes Amin al-Nasser, CEO of the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, as saying.
Shell CEO Wael Sawan, notes Reuters, supported al-Nasser’s opinion and pointed to “government bureaucracy in Europe, which is hindering the necessary development.” The CEO of Brazilian national oil and gas company Petrobras, Jean-Paul Prates, said that “caution must prevail over haste.” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods also noted that “the issues of regulation of environmentally friendly fuels have not yet been resolved.”
Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm rejected the views of top oil industry executives on renewable fuels. “That’s one view,” she said of al-Nasser’s prediction that long-term demand for fossil fuels will persist. “There are other studies that say the opposite, that demand for oil and gas will peak by 2030.” She called the transition to clean fuels “an undeniable, inevitable and necessary restructuring of the global energy system.” Granholm added that the world will continue to need fossil fuels in the future.
The international energy conference CERAWeek 2024 takes place in Houston from March 18 to 24.