Shale gas development will not pose competition to conventional gas, but only to other sources such as coal and nuclear energy, said HE Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, President of the Administrative Control and Transparency Authority.
“I see shale gas complementing conventional energy; it will prolong the availability of the non-renewable conventional energy, may be even beyond 200 years,” al-Attiyah told Gulf Times on the sidelines of the “ExxonMobil 2013 Energy Outlook Forum” at the Four Seasons yesterday.
This, al-Attiyah said, must be seen in the context of some analysts raising concerns about the ability of conventional gas reserves to ensure long-term security of supply.
“With energy demand rising with growing population around the world - particularly in the two huge economies; China and India - both conventional and shale gas will have takers,” al-Attiyah said.
Earlier, in his opening remarks at the forum, al-Attiyah stressed that the global energy landscape is “changing rapidly”.
“And those changes will recast our expectations about the role of different countries, regions and fuels over the coming decades. We are living at a time of game-changers across the fuel spectrum and these will present both new opportunities and challenges,” al-Attiyah said.
Rapid developments in oil and gas production combined with population and economic growth, environment objectives, geo-political factors and government policies are having a profound effect on domestic, regional and international energy markets.
Al-Attiyah said forecasts conducted after the first oil shock in 1973 did not predict the ability of western economies to adopt more energy-efficient technologies and practices, which led to the oil price collapse of the 1980s.
Similarly, energy forecasters did not see the growing importance of the non-Opec production and the oil glut that followed in the 1990s.
More recently, long-term energy forecasts and projections made during the last decade did not see the rapid emergence of the shale gas phenomenon in the US and its huge impact potential on the global energy markets.
“Although most long-term forecasts are not perfect in some respect, we must acknowledge that they remain essential to investment decisions,” al-Attiyah said.
He complimented ExxonMobil for “the well established tradition of sharing its observations about the global energy picture with Qatar Petroleum and its planners every year.”
Al-Attiyah said both energy producers and consumers, planners, oil companies and investors, besides those who were affected directly or indirectly by the energy market impact, have a vital need for accurate energy data analysis and projection that are essential for policy development and financial and investment planning.
