There is much discussion among stakeholders in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry regarding whether natural gas, including LNG, will provide a substantial fuel source as the industry is set to transition to net-zero carbon emissions.
Jim Teague, co-CEO and director, Enterprise Products Partners LP
Jim Teague, co-CEO and director of Enterprise Products Partners LP, believes this discussion is partially weakened by "semantics."
"We don't like the word 'transition,'" Teague said, explaining that Enterprise prefers the term "evolution."
"We have a group called our evolutionary technology team, which is made up of about six people plus a commercial person," he said. Speaking at the 23rd World Petroleum Congress, Teague said that a pipeline system like Enterprise's could be repurposed for carbon capture and sequestration."
According to Teague, there have been hundreds of thousands of homes, particularly in emerging countries, that have been converted to LNG.
"It's been 100 million homes in India, and they're targeting 50 million more homes. In Nigeria and Indonesia, we've improved the quality of life for people in other parts of the world," Teague said. "There's not a chance that would have happened without U.S. shale."
Demand for crude and LNG is continuing, Teague stated.
"Look at what hydrocarbons mean to the U.S. Yes, we want to do it better, and we want to do it cleaner," he said. "People are investing to do things cleaner. I know we are."
Charif Souki, executive chairman of the board for Tellurian, said he agrees that until it is determined what energy will actually "transition" to, "the word doesn't have very much meaning."
At the end of 2021, Souki noted, there was "a change of focus" in the news when discussing the climate crisis.
"The discourse has shifted to an energy crisis," he said. "It's very interesting what the role of the U.S. can be in a situation where we have an energy crisis."
Souki said that at 11 percent of the global economy, "energy is everywhere, and it affects everything we do," but outside of those in the energy industry, most people think about oil and gas only in terms of fuel for their cars.
"They don't think about the implications of hydrocarbons for everything else we do in life, like the way we find hydrocarbons in an operating room in the hospital. Or, like in the clothes that we wear and almost everything we do on a daily basis," he said. "You can't get away from energy. And when you have a crisis in energy, it will affect everything that happens around you."
Souki reflected on the U.S.'s contribution of "fracking" and its impact on global markets.
"When we started the fracking revolution 10 years ago, we delayed the energy crisis by a decade," he said. "We imported less hydrocarbons and started exporting them."
This trend precipitated an annual transfer of wealth of approximately $100 trillion to different countries, Souki said.
"We created a tremendous amount of liquidity in the system, which we were able to rely on in great part coming out of the recession that started in 2008," he said. "The price of hydrocarbons now is going to put us in exactly the opposite position."
With almost infinite resources, particularly in the Bakken and in the Permian Basin, the U.S. has sufficient natural gas resources to last for a hundred years, Souki said.
"Are we going to be willing to participate in the global markets and help other countries build the infrastructure to make sure that those molecules can move from one place to another - domestically and internationally - and make a difference in the world?" Souki asked.
