Oil will maintain its vital role for several decades, which requires continued investments in the oil sector, said the Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Haitham Al-Ghais, contradicting the forecasts of the latest report of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
In an article published on the organization’s website, titled “Peak oil demand is not on the horizon,” Mr. Al-Ghais stressed that “policymakers must be aware of the need for continued investment in the oil industry today, tomorrow and beyond many decades, given the vital role of crude oil products in our daily lives”.
He noted, in this sense, that since the 1990s until the first decade of the current century, the world has witnessed a debate around the theory of “peak oil supply”, noting that this theory did not come to fruition, while at the same time “the continued development of technology had helped to reduce production costs and open new horizons for the expansion of petroleum resources”.
Oil will retain its vital role for several decades, requiring continued investment in the oil sector.
Over the last decade, the dialogue has turned to the question of “peak oil demand”, through theoretical scenarios that do not depend on the analysis of any data, with the aim of exclude oil from the future of global energy, Al-Ghais added, referring to the IEA’s recent report titled “Oil 2024,” in which the agency repeated its hypothesis that oil demand will reach its peak before 2030.
The same official described the contents of this report as “a danger, especially for consumers, only leading to more volatility in energy markets on an unprecedented scale”.
In this vein, Mr. Al-Ghais referred to the agency’s previous forecasts, such as that fuel demand would peak in 2019, while this consumption reached record levels in 2023 while demand continues to increase, just as for the consumption of coal, the IEA of which has predicted the peak in 2014, while it continues to record record levels.
The SG of theOPEC noted that there are many forecast scenarios regarding carbon neutrality that rely almost exclusively on the replacement of fossil fuels, considering that these forecasts tend to replace current energy sources rather than adding new ones, so that fossil fuels still constitute more than 80% of the global energy mix.
Carbon neutrality scenarios that ignore fossil fuels are unrealistic and based on ideologies rather than facts.
Furthermore, Mr. Al-Ghais considered that these expectations “are not based on bases or facts, but rather on wishes and ideologies, and this is in line with the anti-oil policy of the ‘IEA’, emphasizing that the analysis must take into consideration the whole sector and not just one part, when it comes to the future of energy worldwide.
In this context, the OPEC SG highlighted the importance of taking into account “three truths”, namely, the future growth in demand for energy and oil in developing countries over 25 million barrels per day, the continued growth in demand on the oil at a rate of 4 million barrels per day over the years 2024 and 2025, as well as consumer awareness that zero neutrality programs are “unrealistic”.
“Naturally, we all want to reduce emissions, but at the same time, we all need abundant, reliable and affordable energy supplies, and these two aspects cannot be separated,” he concluded.
