Oil giant Shell warns cutting production ‘dangerous’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
Cutting oil and gas production would be "dangerous and irresponsible", the boss of energy giant Shell has told the BBC.
Wael Sawan insisted that the world still "desperately needs oil and gas" as moves to renewable energy were not happening fast enough to replace it.
He warned increased demand from China and a cold winter in Europe could push energy prices and bills higher again.
Mr Sawan angered climate scientists who said Shell’s plan to continue current oil production until 2030 was wrong.
Professor Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist at the University of Cambridge, said firms such as Shell should focus on accelerating the green transition "rather than trying to suggest the most vulnerable in society are in any way best served by prolonging our use of oil and gas".
Head of the UN António Guterres recently said investment in new oil and gas production was "economic and moral madness".
Mr Sawan told the BBC: "I respectfully disagree." He added: "What would be dangerous and irresponsible is cutting oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw last year, starts to shoot up again."
The world is in a race to ditch fossil fuels in favour of greener alternatives as globally leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.
Last year the European Commission outlined how the EU would speed up its shift to green energy to end its dependency on Russian oil and gas.
Many countries do not have the infrastructure to move to more sustainable forms of energy.
Mr Sawan said an international bidding war for gas last year saw poorer countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh unable to afford liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments that were instead diverted to Northern Europe.
"They took away LNG from those countries and children had to work and study by candlelight," he said. "If we’re going to have a transition it needs to be a just transition that doesn’t just work for one part of the world."
The Committee of Climate Change found household gas appliances were linked to respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease.
Claire Fyson, co-head of climate policy at Climate Analytics, a global science and policy institute, told the BBC: "The idea that it’s a choice between our addiction to fossil fuels or working by candlelight is a gross misrepresentation of reality, when we know renewables are cleaner, cheaper and better for public health."
The UK has pledged to spend £11.6bn on international climate finance but a memo seen by the BBC said economic shocks like the Covid pandemic had "turned a stretching target into a huge challenge".
The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, has said that "if governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal from now".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66108553
Mr Sawan is of course perfectly right. The only way to get energy prices back to down to historical levels is to drill more. And as he says, the real losers in the last year have not been rich westerners, but the third world who have to go without energy because they cannot afford it.
But being the BBC, they have to flood the articles with the usual crackpots and charlatans, like Emily Shuckburgh, who is a mathematician not an energy or economics expert. Or Claire Fyson of Climate Analytics , which is a climate lobby group.
And the ludicrous CCC must be getting desperate to pretend that cheap gas boilers are damaging to your health, when the electric alternatives are unaffordable for most people, who will really will suffer without properly heated homes in winter.
Maybe next time, the BBC should ignore the charlatans and publish more comments from experts who understand the energy market.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Hurrah! At last the boss, presumably backed by the Board, of a major European oil and gas company is telling Europe the unvarnished truth.
But will? can? the UK’s pitifully ignorant politicians change or even modify their hitherto stupid “net zero” policies and rhetoric?
I wonder whether Shell’s no doubt excellent scientists will be allowed to address the panicked rhetoric of António Guterres?
“The Committee of Climate Change found household gas appliances were linked to respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease.”
Where is the evidence for this utter carp?
I’m sure British Gas would have something to say about that being that the industry is so tightly regulated.
IIRC, the emissions from the food being cooked were greater, and posed more of a risk (which was negligible).
Comment repeated from previous thread. Still valid for this one:
There are pitiful adverts on TV for donkey charities, featuring animal being worked to death by poverty-stricken people. In a fair world Justin Rowlatt would have to interview such people and explain why western virtue signallers and rent seekers are intent on their conditions not improving, ever.
Of course, 90 per cent of people with cardiovascular or respiratory problems live in houses with gas boilers. Case proven to BBC fact checking standards.
Perhaps The Committee of Climate Change could explain what were the respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease when coal gas was used?
As I understand it none of the studies into gas stoves have actually ever found any direct link with asthma etc but are all correlational and don’t take into account any other possible factors.
“The Committee of Climate Change found household gas appliances were linked to respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease.”
Whah!
2,000,000,000 people cook their food over dried dung.
CCC can put on a Superman suit and leap up my ass in a single bound.
Shuckburgh is nuts, a fanatic, but she gets paid so handsomely for being a ‘climate crisis’ screwball that she can easily dismiss the concerns of hard-pressed energy bill payers because the economic basket case ‘green transition’ must go ahead, no matter what, or we all die.
With global fossil fuel use static at around 82% of total energy use, the so-called green transition continues to be a figment of the imagination.
Left out the link from my comment above.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48069663
Thanks for the link Jaime. Dear Emily would be more at home wearing a straight jacket in a padded cell.
Sir David King in charge! Now the lunatic is really running the asylum, he is NUTS.
I thought he’d gone to live in Antarctica to work on his suntan.
I’d quite like to see how Emily and Claire who, needing to get from (say) Exeter to Aberdeen, would go about it without oil. So, no flying. And any EV would take about two days to do the journey and cost a lot more than an ICE.
Also, as so-called scientists, do they really want to have to rely on intermittent unreliables or pretty-much 100% available FF.
See Jaime’s link – “Thinking the unthinkable”. I’m thinking unintended consequences! It is such an insane scheme that nobody in their right mind would take up. On second thoughts, with António Guterres as Head of the UN, who knows?
I’ve got a feeling that there is a new growth industry out there – wood gasifiers.
Colin Furze seems o be on the right track.
Great video, thanks. We’ll all need to build these if the greens get their way.
Meanwhile, as the Eco Nuts try and destroy the western world, China is ramping up construction of refineries:
Sawan is refering to the problem of depletion. This is likely to become a significant problem over the next year or two, resulting in much higher prices.
More detail ……
https://info.gorozen.com/2022-q4-commentary-peak-oil
Yep. If you reduce investment you reduce exploration and discovery and that means depletion of stocks as less is searched for. What a cold green future they’re planning.
Another thing about Emily Shuckburgh is she was one of the co-authors of Prince Charles’s Ladybird book on “Climate Change” back in 2017:
https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/news/prince-of-wales-and-dr-emily-shuckburgh-co-author-ladybird-climate-change-guide/
This is Money in the Daily Mail has noticed how the standing charge has surged in recent years but still can’t manage to see how grid balancing costs have rocketed from £200m to over £2bn last year due to the increase in wind and solar plays a major part that will only get worse if the insanity continues. The Centrica boss correctly pointed out that energy costs won’t be going down to what they were before the surge but avoided saying why.
Finally, some pushback against the “climate” fanatics. The oil companies should have done this long ago.
Could not agree more. Especially as Net Zero (carbon dioxide) does not affect the climate – See the hundreds of independent scientists supporting Clintel.
CO2 IS THE GAS OF LIFE AN ONLY 0.04% LEFT
And the ludicrous CCC must be getting desperate to pretend that cheap gas boilers are damaging to your health, when the electric alternatives are unaffordable for most people, who will really will suffer without properly heated homes in winter.
Ludicrous? Desperate? No, as with everything else, they simply don’t care. Dead people don’t vote.
‘Dead people don’t vote.’
True: Republican claims to the contrary are false. Google, Yahoo! etc all agree. Joe Biden really did get 81 million votes.
Oh dear! Has Sawan been reading about Hilcorp?
How a Houston Oilman Confounded Climate Activists and Made Billions
Jeffery Hildebrand built an empire by buying castoff wells from big companies under ESG pressure
“HOUSTON, Texas—Climate activists and Wall Street are making it tougher for Big Oil to stay in the oil business. They’ve also helped make Jeffery Hildebrand a multibillionaire.
Hildebrand, who is little known outside his hometown of Houston, has become one of America’s largest independent drillers by buying assets on the cheap, cutting costs and then squeezing out both oil and profit from wells that others left for dead…….. more”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wealthiest-oilman-houston-hildebrand-climate-activism-32bb8aec?st=nvge5rue8ss5mo3