ExxonMobil CEO Tillerson says world has decades of 'sufficient oil'
The Associated Press
Advances in technology will help quench the world’s thirst for oil for decades to come, Exxon Mobil Corp.’s chief executive said Aug. 22.
Rex Tillerson, speaking at an oil and natural gas conference in Stavanger in western Norway, said new technology increased production from oil wells and pushes the frontier for new oil exploration.
“We constantly underestimate the potential of technology,” Tillerson was quoted as saying by Dow Jones Newswires. “There are sufficient supplies for decades to come.”
Tillerson was speaking at the Offshore Northern Seas, an oil industry exhibition and conference of more than 1,000 oil experts from about 30 countries, as well as about 30,000 exhibition visitors.
Tillerson, who took over as head of the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company eight months ago, said technology allowing oil companies to drill deeper and farther would ensure that consumers will have no shortage of supplies.
In 1950, he pointed out, the U.S. Geological Survey set the world’s recoverable oil supplies at around 1 trillion barrels. Now the estimate is three times that.
At the conference opening, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg also pointed out the changing estimates of oil supply. Norway is the world’s third-largest oil exporter.
“In 1965, the Geological Surveys of Norway ruled out the existence of hydrocarbons on the Norwegian continental shelf,” said Stoltenberg. “The great breakthroughs of exploration and technology come when people pool their brainpower and curiosities.”
Norway and several oil companies are looking to the Arctic Waters of the Barents Sea for new supplies. The Norwegian sector of the sea, which is shared with Russia, could contain one-third of Norway’s undiscovered resources, he said.
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