Currently over 80% of all energy is provided by hydrocarbons. Global consumption is currently around 80 million barrels of oil per day. Rapid economic growth in developing countries like China and India could push the requirement up by 40 million barrels of oil per day by 2030. It is estimated that the global spending on oil exploration and production will increase by 10% on last year’s spending of $250 billion and is projected to rise over $350 billion by 2013. To meet the growing demand, world population needs additional crude production equivalent to that produced from Saudi Arabia every three years.
Since, production costs are considerably lower for existing oil and gas fields, existing oil fields are attracting higher investment. Qatar and Oman are in the forefront in the field of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) by constructing large LNG plants. However, higher hydrocarbon prices in the international market can also push up the development of more expensive hydrocarbon sources such as shale oil and oil sands. Coal, another common source of energy, is abundant but carbon capture and storage from coal burning are large-scale technical issues that haven’t been fully resolved yet.
Demand for energy, driven mainly by population growth and increase in wealth, along with concerns over climate change, are pushing for the development of alternative sources of energy namely, Wind, Wave, Tidal, Biomass, Solar, Hydro, Geo-thermal and Nuclear. However, each new source of energy has its own technical and economic challenges to overcome if it were to replace hydrocarbons as an energy source. Developing countries like China and India can benefit enormously, if they can overcome these challenges at the earliest and utilize the new sources of energy.