Crude Summit: Tillerson sees long road for fossil fuels

Former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that petroleum products will be the world's dominant energy drivers for decades to come and warned US policymakers not to meddle with policies that have made the nation a top crude producer and exporter.

"The rumors of the demise of the crude oil industry are greatly over-exaggerated," Tillerson said in a wide-ranging keynote address to the Argus Americas Crude Summit in Houston, Texas. Tillerson served as Trump's secretary of state from February 2017 through March 2018, and previously as chief executive of ExxonMobil.

Crude oil and natural gas will account for more than 50pc of global energy supply "well into the middle of this century," Tillerson said, warning policy-makers against putting too much faith that renewables will fully replace fossil fuels and their global supply chains.

Though research and investment in fossil fuel alternatives are admirable, "there just hasn't been a technological breakthrough, nothing meaningful," Tillerson said.

The US has risen to a position as a legitimate crude exporter, but that role is vulnerable to political forces, Tillerson warned.

"The US supply is somewhat fragile and it can be dramatically changed with a change in administration," he said. "The stroke of a president's pen on an executive order can change everything."

Tillerson's remarks come as leading Democratic presidential candidates promote restrictions on the oil sector as a way of fighting climate change. US senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) say they would ban hydraulic fracturing across the US.

Tillerson said that climate change and its risks are "a very serious matter," but warned policy-makers to avoid becoming "overconfident in projections."

At the same time, he warned that funding for climate science should not be threatened by politics.

"The thing that has always troubled me the most is that there is far too much political interference with the work of the scientists" Tillerson said. "They have to be allowed to do their work in an unfettered fashion."

He noted the opposing views of US president Donald Trump and environmental activist Greta Thunberg presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.

"I am glad I was not in Davos between the president and Greta Thunberg - a good way to get shredded," Tillerson said.

By Chris Baltimore