Conference Speakers Decry 'False Narratives' on Global Warming, Oil & Gas

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Several speakers at the annual conference of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) (Denver, Colorado) decried "false narratives" about the oil and gas industry and global warming, instead urging attendees concerned about the world's ills to pursue other activities with far higher impacts and much lower costs.

"Yes, climate change is a problem. No, it's not the end of the world," Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center (Lowell, Massachusetts), told about 370 attendees at COGA's 36th annual Energy Summit, held October 2 in Denver, Colorado.

Images of bad news and catastrophes make a more significant emotional impact on people compared to nuanced, data-driven discussions about far greater and easier-to-resolve issues, such as malaria in Global South countries, or mother and infant mortality in developing nations, he continued. "Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and the 'climate crisis' sell, they attract attention and they're great ways to raise money and get elected to public office," he said.

But Lomborg said issues carrying high emotional impact can overrun issues of greater global significance, lead to false narratives.

Another conference speaker, Anas Alhajji, managing partner of Energy Outlook Advisors LLC (Flower Mound, Texas), also decried what he said were "false narratives" about climate change and the oil and gas industry. One of the "false narratives" he slammed was the idea that building more solar and wind generation was one way to reduce global demand for oil and gas.

"There is a limited ability to substitute renewables for oil and gas," he told the COGA conference attendees, adding that less than 5% of the world's oil is used to generate electricity.

He also criticized the idea that electric vehicles (EVs) are the future of transportation. Even if 50 million EV's were on the road, he said, that would only reduce global oil demand by about 1.23 million barrels per day, only about 1%, over the next 15 years. Why? He said some of those new EVs would be replacing older EVs, and that some purchasers of EVs will buy an electric vehicle as a second car, while keeping their internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. Thirdly, a good bit of demand growth in oil will come from industry, not transportation, he projected.

In an interview on the conference floor, Alhajji said he shared Lomborg's view about what drives "false narratives:" It comes down to the supply of government and foundation money available to those subject-matter expert and members of the media who focus on doomsday scenarios. In researching and covering global warming, he said, the SMEs and reporters are simply following the economic incentives offered by the market.

The amount of money offered by governments and foundations to focus on global warming incents the false narratives, he told Industrial Info.

A third COGA conference speaker, Chris Wright, founder and chief executive at oilfield services company Liberty Energy Incorporated (NYSE:LBRT) (Denver, Colorado), agreed that the narrative in the U.S. about global warming is overblown and distorted. "I want to get the politics out of energy, and instead focus on data and tradeoffs, not fearmongering," he said.

Wright does not deny that the planet is warming, but he said it's hardly the biggest challenge facing mankind. He criticized the amount of money governments were willing to spend to achieve marginal improvements in the climate. Far greater benefits to humanity could be realized, at far lower costs, if government and foundations focused on reducing the use of dung and wood for indoor cooking in Global South countries, or eradicating malaria in those nations.

"Sickness and death from indoor cooking with dung and wood can easily be fixed with propane cookstoves," he said.

While global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are rising, U.S. air pollution has sharply declined in recent decades, in part because natural gas has supplanted coal as fuel in power generation. Lowered pollution leads to improved public health, he reminded the attendees.

"The U.S. energy mix is heavily weighted to the use of oil and gas, which means we have among the lowest environmental risks in the world related to energy," he said. Africa, by contrast, which gets nearly 50% of its primary energy from biofuels, typically animal dung and wood, has far higher mortality rates tied to energy use. India has about the same level of mortality rates tied to energy use, though most of their primary energy comes from coal.

In his conference remarks and his company's annual reports, Wright said oil and has use is tied to higher wealth creation and improved quality of life: "Affordable, reliable, secure energy is foundational to successful societies," he told the COGA conference. He does not deny that the world's temperature is increasing, but he asserted, "there is no climate crisis."

Liberty Energy's 2024 annual report said "climate change is a global challenge, but it is far from the world's greatest threat to human life. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health and life opportunities for the less-energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world's lucky one billion."

Wright told the conference that pursuit of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 "is a sinister goal. Net zero energy poverty by 2050 is a superior goal."

For all the trillions of dollars the world's countries and companies have poured into renewable energy over the last five decades, global primary energy has not budged: hydrocarbons provided about 85% of primary energy in 1973 and 2023, he said. Over the last five decades, reduced use of hydrocarbons by wealthier nations--the Global North--have been more than offset by rising hydrocarbon use in poorer nations, or the Global South.

Wright's themes were echoed by Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

"Misguided climate policies have real costs," Lomborg said. He cited the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus of Yale University, who estimated that a net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 scenario would generate about $4.3 trillion of annual benefits annually by 2100. But the costs of achieving that net-zero future was far greater: $27 trillion per year.

Policies geared to achieve a net-zero future by 2050 future "are setting the world up for a dramatic loss of wealth," Lomborg said. Far more efficient and effective options were enacting a carbon tax, which he predicted would generate $2 of benefits for each $1 of tax, or investing in what he called "green energy innovation," which would generate $111 of benefits for each $1 investment.

He urged countries and companies to increase spending on green energy innovation by five-fold, to an estimated $100 billion per year from the current level of about $20 billion.

Citing the use of catalytic converters as a cost-effective way to reduce air pollution from vehicles, Lomborg said, "innovation is relatively inexpensive compared to bad climate policies."

In pursuing net-zero by 2050 energy policies, he concluded, the Global North "have promised everything to everyone, and it's not all going to get done. Where are the best benefit/cost ratio projects? Let's pursue those."

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).