• Oil and gas companies must be included in discussions around achieving the clean energy transition, energy chiefs, experts tell Global Energy Forum at WGS2022
• ‘Energy planning must involve long-term, strategic thinking and policies” Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum
Dubai - 29, March 2022: The global energy transition and future security of the sector cannot be achieved by ad hoc energy policies that focus on single energy sources, Claudio Descalzi,CEO of the Italian energy group Eni stated today.
“It is a big mistake to say we just need renewables,” Claudio Descalzi, said today at the Global Energy Forum organised by the World Government Summit (WGS2022) in Expo 2020 Dubai.
He added: “We know about all the different energy vectors that have been added over the last 200 years, but we never found a single energy source we can rely on. It’s crazy to think there is one thing that can replace all sources. We need to use all the different sources.”
Oil and gas companies must continue to be involved in conversations around energy security and transition, Descalzi said in a panel entitled ‘Meeting the 2022 Challenge: Will Energy Security Derail the Energy Transition?’
Descalzi added: “When we talk about energy, we have to know what we are talking about – competencies. High gas prices are not just down to the Russian situation. Worldwide, we have underinvested [in gas].
Also speaking at the forum, Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum, noted that there is currently a sense that energy transition and energy security are in opposition. “There cannot be transition without security and affordability,” he said. “The focus is too much on supply. Starving investment in oil and gas while demand is increasing is not going to solve climate change.”
Jafar, speaking during the panel, noted that energy planning must involve long-term, strategic thinking and policies.
Anna Shpitsberg, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Transformation at the US Department of State, said: “The path to decarbonisation has to be a realistic path. There have been conversations with IOCs. The oil and gas industry is critical to the transition. If we do not engage the industry, we will not meet our goals. Oil and gas companies have to be part of the conversation around transition.”
Also on the panel was Eng. Fahad Alajlan, President of the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC). He said: “We talk about energy security like it’s something new. We cannot talk about oil supply as one component of energy security, we need to look at the broader discussion.”
Meanwhile, Tim Holt, Member of the Executive Board and Labour Director at Siemens Energy AG, said: “Implementation time is the key. There is a lot of inefficiency in the system, and if you want to accelerate the transition, the focus should also be how we remove these inefficiencies from the system and how we focus on the pure ‘get it done’. That will buy us time to make the full transition.”
The group of leaders, policymakers, and experts was speaking during the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum, an international gathering of government, industry, and thought leaders to set the energy agenda. This year’s forum focuses on meeting short-term energy demand, and examining the geopolitical energy market and the climate crisis shaping the energy system.
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