Shell CEO: Easy-to-produce oil and gas will likely peak in next 10 years

Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer said April 1 he expected easy-to-produce oil and gas would likely peak in the next 10 years.

Van der Veer said while depletion of maturing conventional resources would certainly play a key role in peak production, lack of access to remaining large reserves, such as in Saudi Arabia, was also a central component in his forecast.

Remaining resources, such as gas trapped in difficult-to-tap reservoirs or oil sands and shales, will require increasingly costly investments per barrel to produce.

“It’s becoming technologically expensive, capital intensive and lead times are growing longer,” van der Veer said at an energy supply scenario seminar at the Center for Strategic International Studies.

Van der Veer said that while several countries would maintain large remaining conventional oil and gas reserves — such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran — they would likely constrain remaining supplies.

For other resources, such as in the Arctic, cost would restrict production growth.

—The Associated Press