BP CEO: oil markets will save us

Posted by Jerome a Paris on June 13, 2008 - 1:00am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bp, Tony Hayward [list all tags]

The CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, has published, on the occasion of the publication of BP's statistical yearbook, an Op-Ed in the Financial Times with a pretty self-explicit title: Let the markets solve the energy crisis. But it's also very devious, as his ode to markets allows him to mix reasonable arguments with highly toxic ones, and it's going to be very hard to make the distinction that he is correct on some respects but not in others...
Basically his arguments boil down to 3 points: there is no speculation (prices are justified by fundamentals, markets work fine), renewable energy is not serious (too small, mostly), and there is no peak oil (plenty of reserves around). and of course, his solution is simple: oil majors are ready to invest and let market forces solve the supply problem, but political obstacles prevent them, and governments must therefore help by removing these.
What is true is that speculation is not to blame, and that there are political obstacles to investment today. The rest is not quite so true. And that mix, which I expect is deliberate, has one main subtext: "don't worry" (and don't try to move off oil).

OK, here's the text in full.