Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods has said that oil and gas will affect daily living for a very long time. He recently revealed that the only question is whether they will continue to be used as fuel.
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the Sustainable Innovation Forum in São Paulo, Woods said that even though future technological breakthroughs could lead to a change in the burning of hydrocarbons, they will continue to be used for other purposes, like in the medical sector.
He stated that carbon emissions from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal will keep contributing majorly to climate change.
“Crude oil and hydrocarbons are going to play a critical role in everybody’s life for a long time to come.
The question is, do you continue to combust them? And that, I think, will change with time, depending on how technology develops,” he said.
Brazil is set to host the United Nations COP30 climate conference in the city of Belem today, November 10.
Earlier this week, the UN disclosed that it achieved its aim of keeping global warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set at the Paris climate conference in 2015.
Reacting, Woods noted that proper carbon accounting is required to effectively monitor emissions.
He concluded by saying that he agrees with Exxon’s potential return to Iraq, stressing that the company already signed a preliminary agreement with the nation to manage, develop and operate the Majnoon oil field in southern Iraq.
“Without a mechanism to accurately account for the carbon that’s being emitted across economies, net zero is just a slogan.
You have to actually understand where the emissions are coming from and have a ledger-based system that gives credibility to those emissions as they occur along a value chain,” he added.
