Global energy executives meeting here Monday called for greater investment in traditional and alternative power sources to meet future demand, despite the current economic downturn. "Energy demand in the world is so big, you need it all - renewable, innovational and unconventional," Jeroen Van Der Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell plc, said at the annual Asia oil and Gas Conference.
"In all the calculations that we make in Shell, that means the next price spike is in the making," he said, adding that the goal should be to meet future energy needs while reducing carbon emissions.
Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said the decline in oil demand in 2008 and 2009 will be the first two-year contraction since the early 1980s. Petronas president and chief executive Hassan Marican said signs point to a new cycle of volatility after a sharp drop in crude prices from the mid-2008 high of 147 dollars a barrel and growing spare capacity.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak also called for the development of more reserves to address future demand, even though growth may be more modest in the next five years than had earlier been predicted. Opec Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri said in April that the cartel wants to see oil prices rising to more than 70 dollars a barrel in order to pay for future development.
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