By Business Daily
Global oil industry supplies energy that is by its chemistry carbon-loaded and which is the main contributor to global warming. The industry fully understands the reality and gravity of this fact, but the extent to which it can participate and contribute to climate change solutions is limited by available alternative energy technologies. Further, national energy policies define energy options, which the oil industry can only follow.
It is therefore not realistic for climate groups to ask the oil companies to “leave the oil in the ground” when there are petroleum demands to be supplied and which have no immediate energy alternatives.
Listed in their decreasing carbon content hierarchy, the commercial fossil fuels are coal, fuel oil, diesel, aviation kerosene, petrol, LPG, and natural gas. Coal has the highest carbon content while natural gas, which is essentially methane, has the lowest carbon content. Any replacement of a higher carbon fossil fuel with a lower carbon fuel is indeed part of the climate change solutions.
The main petroleum demand segments are road transportation (cars and trucks), rail diesel transportation, aviation fuels, marine transportation, power generation, industrial heating, domestic and institutional heating and cooking.
