CEO Jim Teague speaking energy truths on this week’s earnings call!
“But before we get to Randy, I’ll finish with our thoughts on the changing sentiments around oil and gas. For some time now, the sentiment towards all traditional forms of energy, especially in political circles has been very negative.
Many said that the world should pull the plug on traditional energy as soon as possible and completely devote our capital and efforts toward renewable energy. Without a doubt, this was always naïve. The world now realizes that an overnight transition to renewable sources of energy is not at all possible as evidenced by the rapid development of various global crises, including high natural gas and LNG prices, high crude oil prices not seen since 2014 and runaway inflation not seen for about 40 years.
Europe is starved for gas and is faced with heat or eat, while Russia with its major oil and gas supplier is amassing troops on the Ukraine border. Try as you may, it’s hard to blame these crises on the pandemic. Over one-third of the world lives in energy poverty, mainly in developing countries.
Europe’s energy policies have now made energy poverty a reality in first world countries. As an oil analyst said, energy is the economy. We, in the United States, live in a country of plenty. We are origination with the high quality of life of creative culture, now also blessed with abundant energy. Maybe that has distorted our thinking about the situation in other countries or regions. People who don’t want developing nations to have what we have are either in denial, hypocrites or both. At Enterprise, we’ve been outspoken that is going to take all of the above, not for a few years, but for decades to come. Look to comments made by a variety of sources, everyone from the IEA to the Head of Saudi Aramco, members of the European Union and even the U.S. Energy Secretary. Ultimately, they all message the same thing: Investment in oil and gas needs to ramp up sharply in order to provide the badly needed baseload traditional sources of energy that will be needed alongside low-carbon fuels and green energy to meet the world’s growing demand.”
At Enterprise, we’ve never seen supplying energy to meet growing needs as two competing paths. We’re going to remain focused on supplying the world with a clean, low-cost and reliable fuels it needs today, while also playing a role and important part in developing lower carbon alternatives. I think I’ve said enough. Randy, I’ll let you.
