NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took the stage at the world’s largest energy conference in 2019 to declare an era of US domination after a decade of rapid shale development that the United States until the world’s best oil and gas producer.
Two years later, the oil industry is recovering from the worst recession it has ever experienced after measures to curb coronavirus prevented billions of people from traveling and wiped out one-fifth of global fuel demand. The US fossil fuel industry is still deteriorating after tens of thousands of jobs were lost.
The pandemic also accelerated the energy transition, disrupting the steady rise in fuel consumption, which could otherwise continue unabated for several more years. Demand for oil may never recover from the hit. This year, the CERAWeek conference in Houston is completely virtual and numerous panels are dedicated to the transition to the low-carbon economy of the future, hydrogen technologies and climate change.
Microsoft Corps co-founder Bill Gates, US climate envoy John Kerry, and Amazon speakers and the renewable fuel giant Iberdrola are among the speakers.
“The tone is different: there is one theme that permeates the entire conference, and that is the transition of energy,” said CERAWeek, founder Dan Yergin, vice president of IHSMarkit.
Last year’s conference was one of the first major world events to be canceled, as the pandemic began to rage and quickly made it impossible to gather thousands of people from 85 countries at the conference venues.
Since then, many of the world’s largest oil companies have set ambitious goals to shift new investments to technologies that will reduce carbon emissions to slow global warming. BP Plc, which is based in the UK, has largely scrutinized its oil exploration team; The American car giant General Motors Co has announced plans to stop producing petrol and diesel-powered vehicles in 15 years.
To be sure, the 2021 program includes oil leaders that usually appear at CERAWeek. These include Mohammed Barkindo, Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the CEOs of Exxon Mobil, Total, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum.
But they will participate in panels that focus on the energy transition. Barkindo will discuss what kind of oil and gas will be recycled if future demand is challenged. BP’s Looney will join a panel on inventing energy with Andy Jassy, who will become CEO of Amazon.com Inc. later this year. Occidental chief executive Vicki Hollub and United Arab Emirates minister Ahmed Al Jaber are set to tackle the reduction of carbon emissions.
Oil companies have come under increasing pressure from shareholders, governments and activists to show how they are changing their businesses from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and to speeding up the transition.
“This year’s program reflects the reality of the transition to a net zero future,” said Julien Perez, vice president of strategy and policy for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of major oil companies.
Yergin said Gates will discuss the problems of reducing emissions to slow temperature rise around the world. He is expected to focus on the technologies that are missing, but needed, in the energy transition.
“You often go to conferences where people say, ‘Hey, let’s get companies to report their emissions and make the emissions disappear in some magical way, or we’ll just sell the shares,'” Gates said earlier. said this in an interview with Reuters month.
The reality, according to Gates, is much tougher. Many heavy industries that use oil and gas find it difficult to move away from these fuels, and this is where new technologies are needed. Steel, for example, is still dependent on furnaces fired by metallurgical coal.
‘If you are a steel company, you will report a very large (emissions) number. People still need basic shelter, and it is unlikely that we will stop building buildings. ”
Although the shared goal of carbon neutrality is now widely accepted, finding the best way to achieve it is much more difficult, Yergin said.
‘Previous energy transitions have taken place over centuries. It’s meant to unfold in less than three decades – it’s a very heavy lift, ‘he said.
Reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault; additional reporting by Katy Daigle; edited by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Nick Zieminski