“Shale oil is too expensive. Let’s concentrate on low-cost oil. Don’t tell me I need to invest in the highest technology barrels because low-cost oil is the answer to volatility and peak oil.”
Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of Paris-based Total, explaining why he isn’t expanding assets in the hot US shale oil market.
“This year’s [New Energy Outlook] report suggests that the greening of the world’s electricity system is unstoppable, thanks to rapidly falling costs for solar and wind power, and a growing role for batteries, including those in electric vehicles, in balancing supply and demand.”
Seb Henbest, Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance lead author
“As battery costs fall and their energy density increases, we could see cheaper battery-electric cars than their fuel-burning equivalents by 2030.”
Nikolas Soulopoulos, a London-based analyst with Bloomberg LP.
“President Trump is trying to erase all the climate and environmental progress we’ve made. We aren’t about to go down without a fight, and by joining this litigation, we are signaling to Congress our resolute and growing commitment to defending the Arctic and Atlantic permanent protections and halting the expansion of risky offshore drilling.”
Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters
“The key question for the future of the oil market is for how long can a surge in US shale supplies make up for the slow pace of growth elsewhere in the oil sector.”
–Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director
“Global oil inventories are falling because of OPEC and non-OPEC production cuts, but the road to market balance will be long.”
–Arthur Berman, Consulting Geologist
“The shortcoming of oil replacement by the drill bit has been quite drastic … Discoveries are not keeping up with production.”
Per Magnus Nysveen, head of analysis, Rystad Energy. Last year, 10 billion barrels of oil were discovered, around one third of global consumption, including well-appraisal activity, said Nysveen. He added that supply could fall short by up to 2 million barrels per day within seven to eight years.
“It’s clear that wind energy’s time has come. My message is a very simple one: our government is committed to addressing climate change, and we know that wind power will play a critical role in those efforts.”
Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr.
“My administration is putting an end to the war on coal…The miners are coming back.”
US President Donald Trump, as he signed the “energy independence” executive order
“I suggested that (Trump) temper his expectations. He can’t bring them back.”
Robert Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy, the biggest US coal company
“Overall the idea that we have to go into the Arctic to find new resources I think has been dispelled by the enormous cheap, easier to produce and quicker time-to-market resources in the Permian onshore US. We think there is almost no rationale for Arctic exploration. Immensely complex, expensive projects like the Arctic we think can move too high on the cost curve to be economically doable.”
Michele Della Vigna, commodity equity business unit leader in EMEA at Goldman Sachs
–David Houseknecht, a senior research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, says the Smith Bay discovery in Alaska seems to have incredible potential. Then he adds: “But it’s the last one you’d want to bet your retirement money on.” (3/15)
“I want the states to see the EPA as a friend, as a partner, and not an adversary. Regulators ought not to use their authority to pick winners and losers.”
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
U.S. crude oil output “could go pretty high. But it’s going to have to be done in a measured way, or else we kill the market.”
Harold Hamm, CEO Continental Resources
“As an industry, we’re not investing enough for supply growth to keep up with demand growth.” Decreased spending, particularly in the resource-rich (but expensive) offshore, may cause supply to plateau or decline as global demand is rising, Hess said. A supply deficit is possible as soon as three years, and within five, when the reductions in capital investments should begin to show up in falling offshore supply, Hess said. “We’re not investing enough to keep the offshore investment pipeline full.”
John Hess, CEO Hess oil
“People might have drilled [the Eagle Ford} up very fast in the last two to three years, and they had to because they were measured on multiples of growth and had to grow very quickly. They probably regret it because they learned so much more about how to complete these wells more efficiently today than even what we knew two or three years ago.”
Ryan Lance, CEO ConocoPhillips
“Keep it in the ground’ has been the mantra of environmental groups worried about climate change. But it could be low oil prices and the lack of competitiveness of Canada’s oil sands that keep those reserves in the ground.”
Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com
“If you can get anywhere near the cost target [$100 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage] then you can change the world. It becomes cost effective to put storage batteries in so many places – this research puts us one step closer to reaching that target.”
Michael Aziz, lead researcher in a Harvard battery project and a professor of materials and energy technologies
“There has been no recovery in offshore and international oil and gas activity with the price of crude in the $50 range … for companies with significant exposure, offshore and internationally, the downturn in the oil and gas industry is not over, and job cuts may continue.”
John Graves, CEO of Graves & Co.
“Fossil fuels may lose 10 percent of market share to PV and EVs within a single decade. This may not sound much but it can be the beginning of the end once demand starts to decline.”
Carbon Tracker Initiative
“Oilfield service companies have pressed fresh (green) blood into service amidst a vigorous ramp up in activity, and failure/HSE rates have already felt the negative impact. Not only is labor a bottleneck, it is shaping up to be the primary bottleneck in the early stages of the [North American] recovery…E&P’s will throw enough money at the North American labor problem to bring the sector back to equilibrium, sacrificing capital efficiency to hit production targets.”
James West, a senior managing director at Evercore ISI
“The blunt reality for the Trump administration is that there is no way to make pipeline approvals conditional on the use of U.S. steel without undermining the goal of fair market access for U.S. exporters.”
John Kemp, Reuters energy columnist
“The basic feature of the petroleum industry … that matters most is that it is not self-adjusting.” The industry has “an inherent tendency to extreme crises” and “hectic prosperity is followed all too swiftly by complete collapse.”
Paul Frankel, economist, “Essentials of Petroleum,” 1946 (from energy columnist John Kemp)
“We must break from the recent past [and] re-examine the regulatory onslaught of the last few years that has proposed or imposed some 145 regulations and other executive actions on our industry, and instead work to implement smart energy regulations.”
Jack Gerard, President, American Petroleum Institute
“California can make a significant contribution to advancing the cause of dealing with climate change, irrespective of what goes on in Washington. I wouldn’t underestimate California’s resolve if everything moves in this extreme climate denial direction. Yes, we will take action.”
California Governor Jerry Brown
“If we stay (at $55 a barrel), the world’s biggest oil companies start to make money again. If we go back down to $50 (or lower) in 2017…then those companies are in the negative territory and they go back into survival mode where they have been in the last two years.”
Angus Rodger, Wood Mackenzie’s research director for upstream oil and gas
“Significant advances in battery technology, financial support from governments, regulations and values of Millennials will be key factors leading to increases in electric vehicle adoption.”
Jim Burkhard, energy researcher for IHS Markit
“The OPEC drama is behind us (for now) with the cartel and its friends agreeing to a peak supply. But the topic that’s talked about behind the scenes in Viennese cafes is that of ‘peak demand.’ Every pundit has an opinion about when peak demand will happen. Articles, podcasts, and snappy videos mostly debate in what year our 150-year addiction to the product will begin to wane. Some think it’s as early as 2020; the authoritative International Energy Agency conjectures 2040.”
Peter Tertzakian, Chief Energy Economist and Managing Director, ARC Financial Corp.
“People do tend to look at the total volumes [of conventional oil] being added in recent years and conclude that we are running out of subsurface potential, I find that unlikely. It’s our view that conventional exploration is a perfectly viable growth and renewal option, particularly for those that are good at it. In reality, a lot of exploration’s recent decline is nothing more than the fact that it’s drilling fewer wells in the downturn.”
Andrew Latham, head of exploration research at Wood Mackenzie
