Gerard Izuora
Oil major, Exxon Mobil has presented two reports claiming on one hand that oil demand may fall 20 per cent by 2040 if climate change curbs live up to their promise.
However, the company notes that a more likely scenario is that it would likely grow by 20 per cent in separate outlook, both of which were released last Friday.
The first comes in response to a shareholder vote last year that demanded Exxon publish the risks it faces if the world hits its carbon-emissions goal to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The second is what the Company uses “to help guide multibillion-dollar investment decisions,” according to its preamble. In both instances, the study authors say the world will still need trillions of dollars of investments in fossil fuels to meet its energy needs over the next two decades. The business outlook, as might be expected, is more hawkish. Its findings show oil and natural gas still supplying about 55 per cent of the world’s energy needs by 2040, with oil the biggest contributor.
Coal is expected to fall to less than 30 per cent in 2040 from approximately 40 per cent in 2016. Electric and hybrid cars will approach 40 per cent of light-vehicle sales by 2040, compared to 3 per cent in 2016, it said. The climate change report says oil demand will drop to 78 million barrels a day by 2040 under a scenario whereby global temperatures do not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Both reports show demand for natural gas rising strongly.
Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive officer, says in that report the company needs “to meet society’s growing need for energy while addressing the risks of climate change.”
Exxon Mobil’s own analysis assumes the world will continue to burn through oil and gas to drive their profits and keep us on a path toward global temperatures well above the 2 degree Celsius target,” said Kathy Mulvey, a campaign manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists.