Amid the biggest oil market collapse since 2008, Chevron Corp. (CVX) executive Pierre Breber was asked by alumni of his alma mater Cornell University to predict what the next year might hold.
His response will be, according to prepared remarks, a quote from U.S. baseball legend Yogi Berra: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Chevron, the largest U.S. energy producer except for Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), has helped propel the country’s oil production to the highest level in at least three decades, using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to pull record volumes of crude out of shale formations. The boom touched off a global price war among the world’s biggest suppliers that has sent oil plunging 58 percent since June.
“Already, higher production has contributed to lower oil prices benefiting consumers and lower natural gas prices, which is helping to bring back manufacturing jobs to this country,” Breber, president of Chevron Gas and Midstream, planned to say during Thursday night’s dinner in Menlo Park, California, organized by local alumni of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. “Like Silicon Valley, our energy industry is the envy of the world.”
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil has fallen 57 percent since June 20, settling at $46.31 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Natural gas has fallen 40 percent on the Nymex over the past year to $2.835 per million British thermal units.
Improbable Giant
Breber will describe the U.S. during his talk as “an improbable energy giant,” a country that went through 20 years of oil-production declines before bouncing back with a “renaissance” that has turned it into the world’s biggest producer of oil and petroleum liquids and narrowed the trade deficit.
“The world is scrambling to duplicate our success, from China to Europe, and with good reason,” he said.
Even as renewable energy sources are developed and energy efficiency improves, fossil fuels will remain a part of the world’s energy mix, Breber said. As global energy demand increases, U.S. oil and gas industries will become more important players, particularly amid instability in the Middle East and the conflict with Russia, he said.
“It will take supporting all forms of energy and smart choices about balancing economic and environmental needs,” his prepared remarks showed. “There’s a lot of noise obscuring these issue, which brings me back to Yogi Berra, who said, ‘‘It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.’”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco at ldoan6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net Richard Stubbe
Bloomberg reserves the right to remove comments but is under no obligation to do so, or to explain individual moderation decisions.
His response will be, according to prepared remarks, a quote from U.S. baseball legend Yogi Berra: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Chevron, the largest U.S. energy producer except for Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), has helped propel the country’s oil production to the highest level in at least three decades, using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to pull record volumes of crude out of shale formations. The boom touched off a global price war among the world’s biggest suppliers that has sent oil plunging 58 percent since June.
“Already, higher production has contributed to lower oil prices benefiting consumers and lower natural gas prices, which is helping to bring back manufacturing jobs to this country,” Breber, president of Chevron Gas and Midstream, planned to say during Thursday night’s dinner in Menlo Park, California, organized by local alumni of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. “Like Silicon Valley, our energy industry is the envy of the world.”
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil has fallen 57 percent since June 20, settling at $46.31 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Natural gas has fallen 40 percent on the Nymex over the past year to $2.835 per million British thermal units.
Improbable Giant
Breber will describe the U.S. during his talk as “an improbable energy giant,” a country that went through 20 years of oil-production declines before bouncing back with a “renaissance” that has turned it into the world’s biggest producer of oil and petroleum liquids and narrowed the trade deficit.
“The world is scrambling to duplicate our success, from China to Europe, and with good reason,” he said.
Even as renewable energy sources are developed and energy efficiency improves, fossil fuels will remain a part of the world’s energy mix, Breber said. As global energy demand increases, U.S. oil and gas industries will become more important players, particularly amid instability in the Middle East and the conflict with Russia, he said.
“It will take supporting all forms of energy and smart choices about balancing economic and environmental needs,” his prepared remarks showed. “There’s a lot of noise obscuring these issue, which brings me back to Yogi Berra, who said, ‘‘It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.’”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco at ldoan6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net Richard Stubbe
Bloomberg reserves the right to remove comments but is under no obligation to do so, or to explain individual moderation decisions.
