Ryan Lance, CEO and chairman of ConocoPhillips, has stated that today’s technology innovations have expanded the world’s energy resource base and the oil and gas industry will in turn continue to supply that growth.
Lance presented the keynote speech at “The Geopolitics of Natural Gas” conference when he commented that shale gas production levels currently provide roughly 235 per year of gas, however that number is underestimated as the Middle East resources have yet to be predicated.
The recent discovery of unconventional resources has turned out to be a complete game changer for the industry, but the world’s energy needs still need to grow further at a rapid pace as global demand is predicted to grow 50 percent by 2030 reports the International Energy Agency.
Lance maintains that new supplies are required and that the shale revolution is “only in the first inning of a nine inning game” and we’ve only “scratched the surface” to see how the technology will continue to unfold. “As technology improves,” he noted, the industry will learn to use up resources even more. When questioned regarding the number of years it will take to deplete shale gas resources, Lance answered that the current state of the boom is just the first layer, so consequently it will last for quite some time.