DELAYISM IS DENIALISM
IEA Reverses Course on Oil and Gas Investment
The world needs to develop new oil and gas resources just to keep output flat amid faster declining rates at existing fields, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday in a major shift in its narrative from 2021 that ‘no new investment’ is needed in a net-zero by 2050 scenario.
The rates of decline at operating oil and gas fields have accelerated in recent years, largely due to higher reliance on shale and deep offshore resources, said the IEA.
The agency is under pressure from the Trump Administration to return to its core mission to help protect global security of supply, instead of pushing the net-zero agenda it has been doing so far this decade.
A new IEA report, The Implications of Oil and Gas Field Decline Rates, said on Tuesday that if the industry has to maintain current levels of production, more than 45 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil and around 2,000 bcm of natural gas would be needed in 2050 from new conventional fields.
Even with projects ramping up and others approved for development and not yet in production, a large gap still exists “that would need to be filled by new conventional oil and gas projects to maintain production at current levels, although the amounts needed could be reduced if oil and gas demand were to come down,” the IEA said.
“Only a small portion of upstream oil and gas investment is used to meet increases in demand while nearly 90% of upstream investment annually is dedicated to offsetting losses of supply at existing fields,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said.
“Decline rates are the elephant in the room for any discussion of investment needs in oil and gas, and our new analysis shows that they have accelerated in recent years,” Birol added, finally acknowledging what the industry has been saying for years—underinvestment threatens global energy supply.
“In the case of oil, an absence of upstream investment would remove the equivalent of Brazil and Norway’s combined production each year from the global market balance, Birol added. “The situation means that the industry has to run much faster just to stand still.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
ABS Chairman and CEO Urges IMO to Pause and Rethink the Net Zero Framework
[By: ABS]
“Shipping and the IMO are on different trajectories. There is no clear pathway for green fuel availability and scalability and infrastructure support. LNG and biofuels are mission critical to any success and should not be overlooked, over penalized or discarded in the Net Zero regulation. Quite frankly, achieving net zero for shipping by 2050 looks like a wildcard.”
That was the message for the industry from ABS Chairman and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki at the launch of the 2025 ABS Sustainability Outlook, Beyond the Horizon: Vision Meets Reality.
“The industry needs a framework but we need one that marries ambition with reality,” added Wiernicki. “The mechanics need to be thought through. Right now, we are not where we need to be. Emissions remain 121 percent above the 2008 baseline, compliance costs are compounding, and the signals shaping investment - regulation, fuel pricing, penalties, availability, scalability - are moving at different speeds. The IMO needs to take a timeout. We need to get this right.”
Launched at the ABS Sustainability Summit during London International Shipping Week, the seventh edition of the annual industry leading report shows that, despite progress on carbon intensity, shipping’s absolute emissions continue to climb.
“Maritime decarbonization is a three-part calculus: 70 percent fuel selection, 15 percent energy efficiency, and 15 percent performance optimization. That 30 percent beyond fuel is where software plays a pivotal role and, given the current scarcity of green and blue fuel variants globally, is where the most immediate and scalable gains can be achieved,” Wiernicki said. “Getting closer to the 2030s, we need to protect the bridge, which is LNG with methane-slip controls and credible bio-/e-LNG pathways, to extend the runway, which is energy efficiency technologies and onboard carbon capture, to cut well to wake emissions and prepare the endgame: nuclear and zero carbon fuels when they are safe, insurable and investible at scale.”
The report also highlights the sharply increasing cost of compliance, modelling how a typical vessel trading within the EU could see daily operating costs increase from approximately $15,000 in 2028 to around $45,000 by 2035. Meanwhile, LNG is over-penalized in the early 2030s although it underpins blue fuels, keeps hard-to-abate segments compliant, and buys time for zero-carbon fuels, provided methane slip is addressed and pathways to bio-/e-LNG are opened.
The Outlook, a compilation of ABS research and advanced analysis of progress with respect to sustainability challenges at sea and the readiness of the various solutions, highlights both the important bridging role of energy efficiency technologies and an impending retrofit capacity crunch at shipyards. Finally, the Outlook acknowledges the game-changing potential of nuclear propulsion technology beyond 2035.
A copy of the 2025 ABS Sustainability Outlook, Beyond the Horizon: Vision Meets Reality is available for download here.
The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.
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