Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Tuesday that acquisitions carried out by major oil companies, such as Chevron's $53 billion deal to buy Hess, showed that hydrocarbons are here to stay.
He added - during the annual Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh - that Exxon and Chevron did not buy because they wanted to own assets without benefiting from them.
Prince Abdulaziz referred to ExxonMobil's deal to fully acquire Pioneer Natural Resources at a value of $59.5 billion.
For his part, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said on Tuesday that he expects significant growth in demand for oil, and attributed this to a possible recovery of the Chinese economy and the aviation sector, which is still below pre-pandemic levels.
He added that the energy transition through one size for all is not acceptable because it must take into account the economic maturity of different countries.
Transition to clean energy
These statements come as the International Energy Agency expects that global demand for fossil fuels will peak by 2030 with the increased use of electric cars and the slowdown in the growth of the Chinese economy and its shift towards cleaner energy, which undermines the rationale for any increase in investment in this sector, according to the agency.
“The transition to clean energy is happening all over the world and cannot be stopped,” said the agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol. “It is not a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when?’ The sooner it happens, the better for all of us.”
The agency's report - which advises industrialized countries - contradicts the view of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which expects demand for oil to rise long after 2030 and calls for investing trillions of dollars in it.
OPEC had expected global demand for oil to increase to 110 million barrels per day by 2045, and that oil would constitute 29% of energy supplies with the size of the global economy doubling and the world population reaching 9.5 billion people.
Post a Comment