Rapheal John-Lall

Coun­tries around the world should not ex­pect low­er oil prices in the forsee­able fu­ture. In fact, those prices could reach as high as US$130 a bar­rel in the next decade, said Dr Steven Chu, for­mer US Sec­re­tary of En­er­gy.

"We do not know what the price of oil will be in the com­ing decades, but I think it is not go­ing to go be­low US$70 a bar­rel for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time un­less there is a very deep re­ces­sion. Can it go up to US$120 or US$130? The an­swer is, yes. How­ev­er, it is un­like­ly to go up to US$150 to US$200 be­cause the meth­ods of find­ing oil are get­ting bet­ter every day and ex­tract­ing it. I think prices will stay in the US$90 to US$110 range," he said.

Chu, who served as the US Sec­re­tary of En­er­gy from Jan­u­ary 21, 2009, to April 22, 2013, in the Barack Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion, spoke at Mon­day's open­ing of the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.

At the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, he gave his fore­cast and analy­sis on how he sees the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor evolv­ing over the next few decades.

He be­lieves the price of nat­ur­al gas will re­main be­tween US$4 to US$6 mil­lion met­ric British ther­mal units (mmb­tu) for the "next cou­ple of decades", even if the US be­gins to ex­port nat­ur­al gas.

"It is hard to make a pre­dic­tion un­less you know what is hap­pen­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly. The tech­nol­o­gy in hy­draulic frac­tur­ing and hor­i­zon­tal drilling are rapid­ly chang­ing," he said.

Chu said as Sec­re­tary of En­er­gy, he was ac­cused of ma­nip­u­lat­ing cir­cum­stances to change the price of oil for the first three years.