JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Physicist Dr Steven Chu says: Asia to be biggest market for oil, gas

by

20140205

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored