The deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom said that the time of oil and gas is not over yet

The time for oil and gas is not over yet, said Oleg Aksyutin, Deputy Chairman of the Board and Head of the Gazprom Department, at the Russian Energy Week.

Aksyutin did not agree with the forecasts of the International Energy Agency (IEA) about the end of the era of energy resources. According to him, the need to accelerate the energy transition was “imposed by the scenario.” “They were declared in the script, it was said that this was the ultimate truth. Accordingly, countries made decisions in this direction,” he said.

The deputy chairman added that as a result, the level of investment in the oil and gas industry over the past two years has become the lowest over the past 15 years.

“This served as the basis for the crisis that we are seeing in the global energy sector today. This is not an accident, this is a pattern. <...> The time of oil and gas was recognized as over early,” concluded Aksyutin.

In October 2022, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin statedthat the cause of the current energy crisis in the European Union is an artificial global underinvestment in traditional energy, reinforced by anti-Russian sanctions.

“[Источники энергокризиса] in colossal underinvestment in the industry, one of the reasons for which is the irresponsible and adventuristic policy of an accelerated green transition,” Sechin said at the XV Eurasian Economic Forum in Baku.

Then analysts of the consulting company Yakov and Partners (a former division of McKinsey in Russia) notedthat the sanctions policy and the EU’s desire to abandon Russian energy resources could cost Europe up to 1.6 trillion euros in 2023. In particular, the crisis may affect the metallurgy industry, which is the most dependent on energy prices.