Despite growing calls for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels, oil and gas will still be around in a century's time, said Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm, one of the principal architects of the shale boom.
"All the studies we've done show we're going to be on oil and gas for the next 100 years," the executive chairman of Continental Resources, the biggest producer in North Dakota, said Sunday at a kick-off dinner for the American Energy Security Summit sponsored by the Hamm Institute for American Energy in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
In recent weeks, the industry has been buoyed by oil prices racing toward the key $100/bl milestone on the back of extended production cuts by Saudi Arabia and Russia, as well as signs of robust demand.
"All of us in this room, we don't need $100 oil — high $80s, that's fine," Hamm told an assembled group of fellow oil energy executives, including Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth and Devon Energy's chief executive Rick Muncrief, and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
The shale billionaire and advisor to former president Donald Trump, also called for more consistency out of Washington, regardless of which party is in control, comparing current swings in policy to "riding a roller coaster."
"We need something that transcends politics with an energy policy that can last from one administration to the next," he said.
When federal leases were halted by the current administration, it took a whole year to modify drilling plans. "Everything you planned that you're going to do, if you can't get a permit, you have to basically go to plan B," Hamm said.
He also complained about the chronic underinvestment in new production by the industry in recent years, citing Europe's supply crisis last year as an example of the repercussions that can follow.
Others also cautioned against a speedy energy transition when the world is not quite ready to give up fossil fuels and with a global population that is set to expand rapidly.
"The focus we've had on ESG and clean energy is taking away investment from oil and gas in particular," warned Amrita Sen, Energy Aspects founder and director of research. "And it has been taking away investment for the last few years, even though oil demand continues to rise."
While fossil fuels made up 82pc of primary energy consumption back in the 1980s, that percentage is still the same today.
"Governments have to understand the need to give security of demand if they are to have security of supply," Sen said.
Among the speakers at the conference today are Wirth, Birnbaum, Pompeo, former US secretary of labor Elaine Chao, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Occidental Petroleum chief executive Vicki Hollub, FedEx chairman Fred Smith, Goldman Sachs chairman David Solomon
