Visitors to OGJ Online's free news site last week no doubt were slightly startled to see a distinctly nonpetroleum photo gracing the opening page: that of heavily armed members of the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in full SWAT (special weapons assault team) gear.
What makes it "oily" is that the Mounties were manning an ID checkpoint at one of the main entrances to the World Petroleum Congress.
Demonstrations fizzled
In one of the stories that Senior Writer Sam Fletcher filed from WPC in Calgary last week, the online headline suggested that Canadian police were "overprepared" for demonstrators, most of whom headed home after the first day of what turned out to be surprisingly muted demonstrations.
It's doubtful that the Calgary police felt that way, and certainly Seattle police must have looked at the WPC news photos and video wistfully, in light of the devastating riots accompanying the World Trade Organization meeting in that city late last year. If anything, the calm and order that prevailed was a tribute to the extensive security measures taken in Calgary. There had been expectations of possibly violent demonstrations by activists decrying the role of petroleum in today's world and demanding an immediate, universal switch to renewable energy sources.
Even though those demonstrations fizzled, some WPC delegates grumbled over the extemely heavy focus on environmental and social issues at what is typically perceived as a conference with a technology-heavy focus on energy development, Fletcher reported. Much of the emphasis was on making the point that economic development and enviromental preservation can co-exist (see related article, p. 27, and editorial, OGJ, June 12, 2000, p. 25).
Energy obligations
Here's a more-radical thought: The developed nations of the world have a moral obligation to assist their poorer brethren in promoting low-cost energy development, as a means of ensuring a decent standard of living.
This precept lies at the heart of an updated mission statement by another of the world's leading energy organizations, the World Energy Council. The WEC published a widely read report in 1993 that looked at the energy options of tomorrow's world (ETW) and recommended policy actions; it updated that document recently.
Noting that energy's role in economic development was one of the most crucial messages in the 1993 document, ETW 2000 reiterates, with emphasis, this key tenet: "While many suggested at the time-and are still saying today-that energy's role has diminished in importance and that economic growth and energy demand can be decoupled through programs to reduce energy intensity, the message of ETW was to remember that health, water, food, education, and many other key aspects of welfare cannot be improved unless modern energy becomes available.
"ETW also concluded that, even if sound policies and measures were quickly introduced to shift the world's path of energy development onto a more sustainable trajectory, no radical changes in energy trends were likely to occur in the period to 2020."
Taken together, these statements comprise a resounding manifesto for the global oil and gas industry. There's more.
ETW 2000 notes that about 20% of the world's population consumes about 60% of the total energy supply vs. about 80% that consume the remainder: "The 2 million poorest people ($1,000 annual income per capita or less), a small but growing share of whom live in shanty towns with most still scattered in rural areas, use only 0.2 toe (tonnes of oil equivalent) of energy per capita annually, whereas the billion richest people ($22,000 annual income per capita or more) use nearly 25 times more at 5 toe per capita."
The folks wearing dinosaur suits and waving placards from bicycles at WPC might insist that this imbalance be redressed by slashing energy consumption among the richest folks, invoking the holy writ of sustainable development.
What's sustainable?
But WEC has a different take on the subject, noting that "ellipsethe No. 1 priority in sustainable energy development today for all decision-makers in all countries is to extend access to commercial energy services to the people who do not now have it and to those who will come into the world in the next 2 decades, largely in developing countries, without such access."
Those are my italics on the word "commercial"-no mention of subsidies, alternate fuels substitutes, renewables quotas, or uneconomic or unproven technology.
ETW 2000 also contends that these energy services will be fulfilled only if economies grow and that this growth will require the supply of energy "at an affordable price with no reasonable expectation to break the linear relationship between GDP growth and the increase in energy demand that has been experienced so far."
And, finally:
"The manner in which modern energy is supplied to everyone in the world is humanity's greatest opportunity to establish an environmentally sustainable system for the whole of the next millennium."
Hmmm. Affordable energy = sustainable development?
That's a mission statement if ever I heard one. Get after it.
