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Excerpts of paper
presented by the
Chairman and CEO,
ExxonMobil Corporation,
Rex Tillerson, during
OPEC International
Seminar, Vienna,
Austria. |
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The
theme of this year's seminar,
“OPEC in a New Energy Era”,
speaks to the new challenges and
opportunities in the years
ahead, from expanding production
capacity… to stabilizing
markets…to meeting environmental
expectations…to supporting
development.
ExxonMobil is proud to
participate in the energy
sectors of many OPEC member
nations, acting as a partner in
meeting these challenges and
advancing opportunities.
However, when it comes to the
development of petroleum
technologies, I would suggest
that OPEC and the world energy
community as a whole are not
entering a new era.
With all due respect to many who
have said otherwise, the era of
“easy oil” is not over. |
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Why?
Because there never has been an era of
“easy oil”. Our Industry has constantly
operated at the technological frontier.
Oil only seems easy after it has been
discovered, developed and produced.
Understanding this fundamental fact is
essential to creating and sustaining the
conditions for future technological
progress.
As has been noted by other speakers, by
2030, the world's energy needs will be
50 percent greater than they are today.
Growing populations, especially in
developing countries, will require more
energy to attain higher standards of
living, to address social pressures, and
to achieve greater security.
OPEC is destined to play an important
and growing role in meeting this future
demand. Within the next decade, crude
production from non-OPEC sources is
expected to plateau, while world oil
demand continues to increase.
The result will be a call on OPEC of
nearly 50 million barrels a day by 2030
an increase of over 50 percent above
OPEC's current levels.
To reach the needed levels of production
worldwide, we must continue to innovate.
And fostering innovation will require
free trade and investment open access,
and international partnerships. Oil
producers and need consumers, and oil
consumers need producers.
Under these conditions of energy
interdependence, industry can continue
to develop, transfer and apply the
energy technologies needed to support
economic growth and social progress in
OPEC's member countries and beyond.
The history of our industry shows when
these conditions are consistently met,
energy technology advances, and it
advances in some truly remarkable ways.
The question whether petroleum
technologies in the future will be
evolutionary or revolutionary can be
answered “yes”.
Technological progress in our industry
is never an overnight phenomenon,
however, and it rarely makes headlines.
It results from an incremental process
involving consistent investment and the
application of scientific, engineering
and managerial expertise over sustained
periods of time. And in the end, the
evolutionary process can have
revolutionary results that dramatically
improve our energy future.
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