World Petroleum Conference: We Must Slow Transition, 'Cuz Otherwise There Will Be Social Unrest
Leaders of the world’s biggest oil companies have used an industry gathering in Houston to launch an attack on the speed of transition to clean energy, claiming a badly managed process could lead to “insecurity, rampant inflation and social unrest”. Executives from oil companies including Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, and US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron publicly described the shift towards clean energy alternatives as “deeply flawed”. They called for fossil fuels to remain part of the energy mix for years to come despite global efforts for an urgent response to the climate crisis.
Saudi Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, told delegates at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas, that adapting to cleaner fuels “overnight” could trigger uncontrolled economic inflation. “I understand that publicly admitting that oil and gas will play an essential and significant role during the transition and beyond will be hard for some,” he said. “But admitting this reality will be far easier than dealing with energy insecurity, rampant inflation and social unrest as the prices become intolerably high, and seeing net zero commitments by countries start to unravel. “The world is facing an ever more chaotic energy transition centred on highly unrealistic scenarios and assumptions about the future of energy.”
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The calls for a slower transition to clean energy put oil executives on a collision course with those energy industry experts, climate scientists and governments which have warned that without a rapid phasing out of CO2 emissions within the next decade catastrophic levels of global heating will be unavoidable.
The US deputy energy secretary, David Turk, speaking at the same conference, rebuffed the industry’s stance against a rapid shift to cleaner energy by insisting that action to address the climate crisis was urgent. “There is not an alternative to stepping up and fixing the threat to climate change,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/07/oil-companies-blame-clean-energy-transition-for-market-volatility