3 November 2009
Sopuruchi Onwuka — The western collaboration in the search for fuel alternative to petroleum is no threat to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as no energy policy will diminish the dependence of world economies on hydrocarbon fuel in far future.
This is even as the group calls on members to use oil wealth to drive rapid industrialization of their economies before their output declines.
OPEC Secretary General, Mr. Abdalla El Badri who led the secretatiat staff of the organization on a working visit to Nigeria made it clear that the highly advertised crude oil revenue to member countries is ultimately spent in the industrialized countries.
He said OPEC members most of which are underdeveloped form the biggest markets for the industrialized countries of the world, expressing worry that if member countries missed the opportunity of driving industrialization they might find it difficult to sustain growth after the age of fossil fuel.
Mr. El Badri who spoke at a media chat with Nigerian journalists said the experiments with green fuel alternatives by and plans byn the United States to pursue independence from imported oil however do not pose threat to the market share of petroleum in the global energy mix.
According to him, oil would continue to be the dominant fuel in the world market in the foreseeable future.
According to him, talks, plans and experiments on alternative energy has been running for the past 30 years without any commercial volumes that could match the dominance of crude oil in the export market.
" I want to tell you that oil will remain the dominant energy for the foreseeable future. I have been hearing this from the United States presidents in the last 30 years; at least I am old enough to track this. There is nothing called independent energy.
"There is no way America will not rely on oil from the Middle East or any other exported oil," El-Badri explained, while responding to a question on President Barak Obama's policy on cutting down on America's dependence on imported oil.
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