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ExxonMobil CEO: Energy use to grow 40 percent by 2020
The Associated Press
The chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. says the United States must face its energy future realistically and reduce dependence on Middle East oil by developing sources in other parts of the world.
Lee R. Raymond said June 7 that Americans must allow more drilling off the shores of California and Florida, in Alaska and the Rocky Mountains.
Raymond, who leads the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, also said that energy use will increase 40 percent by 2020, ensuring a rise in carbon dioxide emissions. Many climate scientists link emissions to global warming, but Raymond has always said more study is needed.
“This reality is one that many people recoil for accepting, but the United States and other industrial nations will continue to increase carbon emissions for some time, regardless of Kyoto,” he said, referring to an international treaty to limit emissions by developed countries.
Raymond made the comments in a speech prepared for delivery June 7 to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. United States dependent on imports The ExxonMobil CEO said the United States will, like most of the world, be petroleum importers, increasingly dependent on the Middle East because of the region’s large oil and gas reserves, estimated at half the global supply.
“We do not have the resource base to be energy independent,” he said of the United States. “Even if we are prepared to develop more petroleum supplies here, we will still be far, far short of our needs. And in doing so, we simply cannot avoid significant reliance on oil and gas from the Middle East because the world’s supply pool is highly dependent upon the Middle East.”
Raymond said the United States should give economic aid and trade liberalization to help unstable but oil-rich countries elsewhere in the world, including Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea area.
Raymond said 80 percent of the world’s energy in 2020 will still come from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. He said alternate sources such as solar and wind power will be too costly.
Raymond skipped over policies to encourage more efficient use of energy, calling it “a discussion for another time.”
ExxonMobil is based in Irving, Texas.
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