“Renato Lima-de-Oliveira, an assistant professor of business and society at Asia School of Business and a fellow of the Centre for Market Education, said this year has been a positive year for oil companies after a disastrous 2020. He said it is likely that 2022 would be even better, with the full recovery of production beyond pre-pandemic levels or above 100 million barrels per day.
But in the medium to long term, he said crude oil is still a sunset business as the world renews the calls to decarbonise by 2050 or earlier in order to deal with climate change. He noted that many countries are facing an energy crisis now like Brazil, China and the UK. “The core of the problem is that investments in fossil fuels are going down because of the push to decarbonise the economy and their lower long-term growth prospects in a net-zero emissions world but renewables are not yet mature enough to fully replace them.
“This is the time to put in place policies that are aligned with this emerging energy economy and are resilient to the climate challenge we face. “In particular, the aspiration to be net zero by 2050, as expressed in the 12th Malaysia Plan, is a start but it needs to be followed up soon with a concrete roadmap to boost investments in green economy,” Renato said.