Galp Executive Chairman (CEO) Andy Brown said at a web summit panel this Thursday that the world is entering a period where “cheap energy will no longer exist.”
“I think we are entering a period where cheap energy will disappear. Our consumption habits and how we use energy will undergo major changes and we will have to get used to huge volatility,” Brown said at the panel. “Energy in Europe: what’s next?”.
According to the general director of the oil company, the current price of energy resources is connected “both with the lack of investment and with the war in Ukraine.”
“The price of energy before the war was higher than it is now, the price of gas at the end of last year was higher than it is now, so you have to look at the whole spectrum,” said Andy Brown.
One of the reasons for these procedures, according to the manager, is that energy companies are looking for an alternative without investing in oil and gas, but “the alternative is not ready to dominate.”
The CEO of Galp referred to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which would require an investment of US$125 billion by 2050.
“There are three to four billion a year, which is twice what we invest today, and if you are going to invest twice as much, energy will cost twice as much,” he calculated.
One solution is to strengthen the capital of companies so that they can reinvest in these industries – and this requires the cooperation of governments.
“What we need to do is, for example, and we have an oil refinery here [Sines], we have to transform it, and for this we need to invest, we have to find a way to capitalize to do this. We need to get governments to regulate and provide incentives so that when prices rise, the money received is not only taxed and distributed, but also channeled into the energy of the future,” he said.
Andy Brown assures that Galp sees a future with lower carbon emissions, but he also warned about current consumption habits, according to which products derived from hydrocarbons are the axis of rotation.
“We see that the future will be carbon-free, we know that we will have to find technical solutions, but we understand that people in Portugal continue to live around fossil fuels, so we cannot refuse this responsibility, we must be part of this responsibility,” he assured.
Andy Brown was also enthusiastic about green hydrogen, believing that “it will bring many solutions.”
As for Brazil’s recent elections, which were won by Lula da Silva, who will succeed outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, the company’s CEO does not believe that the change in policy could affect its operations.
“In my previous job, I often traveled to Brazil. I met with President Dilma. [Rousseff]who was also on the left, we also passed the president [Michel] Afraid. We had governments that were left and right, but Congress was more central,” he said.
As for his future, Brown left the doors open and said “that’s yet to be decided.”
“What happens next is yet to be decided. I do not want to leave the energy sector,” the British manager concluded, adding that it is important to make the right decisions in the coming years.