Oil's Energy Throne Secure for Decades
Posted on: Sunday, 20 November 2005, 03:02 CST
By Anonymous
OIL
In the post-mortems that followed the WPC, the green lobby lamented the fact that not enough prominence had been given by delegates to the environmental side of things.
What about such issues as marine and terrestrial pollution, sustainable development, renewable alternative energy sources, carbon dioxide emissions, climate change? These were touched on but not energetically enough explored, they complained.
In truth, this was a convention about oil and the best means of extracting it efficiently and cost-effectively as well as refining it in ways to make it cleaner-burning and safer.
Unsurprisingly, an inordinate amount of time was not given to discussing energy alternatives that would usurp fossil fuels' current dominant position.
Much hype has been given to the emergence of such non-oil energy generators as wind and solar power, but in spite of massive research and development, they constitute not even 5% of energy consumption today.
An environmental affairs official with Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan, Professor Masayuki Saranouchi, put the kibosh on any meaningful green fuel breakthrough. "We don't think that will happen soon," he told the WPC.
Toyota is a leading contender in researching motor vehicles that have less reliance on carbon-based fuels and has piloted hybrids that run on a combination of hydrogen and petrol.
All oil companies of any substance are in deep in the search for new energy sources. Gas is in vast supply, especially around Africa where known reserves of some 500 trillion cubit feet are double the deposits in North America and Europe combined.
Technology is close to producing virtually carbon-emission free liquid from gas fuels and that is where the oil companies are putting their money.
Nuclear energy is the biggest threat to oil's sovereignty but it has many bogeys to overcome before it can be altogether trusted.
The oil industry insists that it is not blind to the need for new energy sources and that sooner or later oil will run out. When it does, they say, they want to be there with non-oil ways-and-means of propelling the world.
Copyright International Communications Nov 2005
Source: African Business
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