The oil era will not end in the coming
decades, Yuri Shafranik, President of the Council of the Russian Union of Oil
and Gas Producers, has said in an exclusive interview with Itar-Tass in
London
after his report
at the British Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He
believes the “oil peak”, in the form in which it is described by Western
analysts, is hardly probable.
“Naturally, a peak and a recession will
come some day, but not in the form of ‘up and down.’ Some day energy production
will be stabilised, and not because of oil, but because of other energy
sources, like shale gas, liquefied gas, nuclear and hydrogen power engineering
… Those energy sources will occupy their niches, because they offer no
competition to oil. No one will lay a gas pipeline to tents of skin and bark,
in which people live in the tundra, or to highland villages. Other energy
sources will be used there. This is why I have long preferred the idea of
stabilized oil production to the idea of an oil peak.”
According to Shafranik, some fluctuations
will take place in the stabilised oil production anyway. “Expenditures on oil
production are growing, which will bring about some reduction of oil output. When
we develop less expensive technologies, oil output will go up. When the
generation of atomic, hydrogen or other energy grows, a smaller amount of oil
will be needed. If the demand for natural or liquefied gas grows, the situation
will be the same. All the attempts to intimidate people by the talk about the
oil peak are the result either of insufficient professionalism, or of excessive
imagination,” he said.
“I began to work as an oilman in Samotlor
in 1974. That time a discussion was also going on about how long we shall be
able to use the oil reserves. Some people believed oil reserves would be
depleted soon. During the years that have elapsed since that time, especially
during the past 20 years it turned out that prospected oil reserves are greater
than the oil reserves which are being developed. This means there would be no
oil hunger in the world in the coming decades,” Shafranik continued.
“It is true that hydrocarbons are getting
more and more expensive. Enormous investments are needed, because oil is
extracted from the depth of six, seven kilometres or more. This is why I am of
the opinion that the time of cheap oil is over, but the oil era will not end in
the coming decades. This is a fact,” he said.