Speaking to Bloomberg, the Aramco chief describes the outlook for oil supplies as ‘increasingly worrying’ and argues that the transition to alternative fuels will be ‘long and complex’.
Saudi Aramco plan to invest more than $300 billion over the next decade to find new fields for oil and gas supplies. The Bloomberg report makes the key point that the relatively modest prices are discouraging exploration and that this will result in huge shortages. Discoveries are down 50% in the last four years.
Luckily for Scotland, there have been massive finds west of Shetland in the last few months. See:
Speaking about alternatives to oil he says:
‘Looking at today’s energy mix, the expectations for alternatives are through the roof,” Nasser said. While acknowledging that electric vehicles are gaining in popularity, he said they currently make up less than two-tenths of one percent of the world’s 1.2 billion vehicles and were unlikely to account for more than 10 percent of the global fleet by 2030.’
According to the report, round $1 trillion of investments have been lost in the downturn and at least 20 billion barrels of new output will be needed to meet demand. Much of this new demand is emerging as I write in countries like India. See this earlier piece:
As for shale oil, the chief echoes my earlier expressed confidence that:
‘Investments in smaller increments such as shale oil will just not cut it.’
Even these small increments from shale are far from secure with a world shortage of the essential fracking sand already with us. See:
So, worry not about Scottish oil revenues in the future unless of course we continue to send them down to the UK Treasury.
Talking-up Scotland 
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