President of the OPEC Conference

The opening session of the seminar provides a general overview of the energy industry, assessing recent trends and the outlook for the first quarter of the century and beyond. It examines the challenges and opportunities facing the industry, in particular the petroleum sector. And it seeks to identify potential ‘game-changers’, such as transportation, consumer behaviour and supply and demand.

This session focuses on oil and how it interacts with developments in the world economy. Of special significance are the lessons learned from the recent economic and financial crises. Participants assess the impact of the global business cycles and three-track economic recovery on the world oil market. And attention is given to the changing paradigm in global economic cooperation and governance, as epitomised by the activities of the G20 or the introduction of new regulations.

The highly topical issue of production capacity expansion takes centre- stage here, noting, among other things, the impact of uncertainties in demand on oil upstream investment decisions. The session looks at the challenges and opportunities arising from strengthening cooperation between national and international oil companies, and particular attention is paid to the impact of oil price movements, fiscal regimes and project costs on investment planning.

OPEC Award for Research 2012
OPEC Award for Journalism 2012

The importance of multilateralism in addressing climate change is featured here. The session reviews the solutions and challenges for the oil sector provided by environmentally friendly technologies, including their potential impact on demand. Tied in with all this are policies affecting the energy scene, and this provides a key platform for debate.

The panel discussion benefits from the insights gained over the past two days and concludes the seminar. It focuses on the role of oil within the global energy scene specifically and in a changing world economic landscape generally. It assesses the importance of multilateralism in stabilizing the world oil market. Finally, it broadens out the debate to examine energy poverty and the quest for development, fundamental human issues which place everything in context and provide a fitting end to the seminar.