Aramco’s Nasser calls for action to avert more serious energy crisis

Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco

Saudi Aramco’s President & CEO Amin Nasser has called for action to avert a more serious energy crisis and avoid a North-South transition divide.

In his keynote speech today, Sept. 18, at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Canada, he highlighted the need for a more realistic and robust transition plan that is multi-source, multi-speed and multi-dimensional. He also emphasized the potential consequences of ignoring energy security and affordability issues, while welcoming growing recognition among world leaders that transition planning required pragmatic and proportionate solutions that reflect different countries’ economic and energy situations.

“While much of the Global North is focusing on environmental sustainability, the priority for many in the Global South is economic survival. Transition planning has not sufficiently recognized this clear need for distinctive solutions, and a widening divide is an inevitable result,” Nasser added.

On the danger of phasing out conventional energy prematurely, Nasser said: “The current transition shortcomings are already causing mass confusion across industries that produce and/or rely on energy. Long-term planners and investors do not know which way to turn. It is increasing the risk of acute supply-demand imbalances in conventional energy, and therefore an even more serious energy crisis where countries and people, not just assets, are stranded.”

“We are talking about the complete transformation of a $100 trillion global economy today. One that is likely to roughly double in size by 2050, with close to an additional two billion energy consumers. In short, the re-invention of our entire energy-based way of life in less than 30 years,” Nasser said on the scale of the transition challenge.