Fracking Titan Liberty Says Fossil Fuels to Rule for Decades

Aug 29, 2022

(Bloomberg) Chris Wright, who runs America’s second-biggest frack services company, said there’s no energy transition underway and warned subsidies for wind and solar will only drive up power prices and increase grid instability.“We’re investing a lot of money in some new energy technologies; some of this is great, but it’s not an energy transition,” Wright, chief executive officer at Denver-based Liberty Energy Inc., said during a Bloomberg TV interview on Monday. “Three decades from now the vast majority of energy will come from hydrocarbons.”

Wright’s comments are in stark contrast to the positions mapped out by other oil and gas executives and trends highlighted in government and private-sector data.

The renewable contribution to US electricity generation, for example, has more than doubled in the past two decades, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, plug-in vehicles are expected to represent 23% of new passenger car sales globally in 2025, up from less than 10% last year, BloombergNEF figures showed.

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Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Darren Woods cited the energy transition earlier this year as an impetus for an overhaul of the biggest US oil explorer’s business lines and a consolidation of office space.

Major energy companies around the world are grappling with how best to keep their traditional oil and natural gas businesses operating while also responding to demands from political leaders and investors for a transition away from fossil fuels.

“Shoveling subsidies to wind and solar, who are 3% of global energy, that’s not going to meaningfully change greenhouse-gas emissions,” Wright said. “But it is going to drive electricity prices up and make grids less stable.”