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Both Gerrit A. Wagner, president of Royal Dutch Petroleum, and Sir Eric Drake, chairman of British Petroleum, denied that there is an energy "crisis." What there is, said Drake, is a man-made shortage of energy in certain places. In the U.S., he contended, government regulation of natural gas prices has discouraged investment in new sources of supply, and environmentalists have virtually stopped the building of new electrical generating plants and urgently needed oil refineries. There is no physical world shortage of oil, he said.
British estimates place current world production of oil at about 19 billion bbl. a year, and project that it must rise to 35 billion by 1980 and to between 45 and 55 billion by 1990 to satisfy global consumption needs. However, said Drake, "Our estimate is that the remaining proven conventional reserves of oil amount to 570 billion bbl." Sir Eric stated: "We believe there are potential reserves of another 1,080 billion bbl. In addition, we think we could get about 700 billion bbl. of oil from tar sands and another 3,140 billion bbl. from oil-bearing shale." Not all those actual and potential reserves are recoverable at current prices, he pointed out. Moreover, as several speakers said, some two-thirds of conventional oil reserves lie beneath Middle Eastern and North African countries, and all of them are constantly raising the price.
Charles Tillinghast, chairman of Trans World Airlines, argued that the energy crisis is political−and thus not easily soluble. "The technology may be there," said Tillinghast, "but the political will is not. Environment may be the concern of only a minority of people in the U.S., but we have reached the stage where almost any determined group can block the doing of anything. I don't think we shall see solutions coming until things have got considerably worse. I think it is going to take cold houses and unemployment through lack of energy to persuade the public and the politicians that something drastic must be done."
AGRICULTURE
Food prices are even higher in Europe than in the U.S., which is a source of American complaints that the Common Market's agricultural program distorts world trade. "We have established in recent years the most planified market that ever existed," said Louis Camu, chairman of the Banque de Bruxelles. "Every day the price for eggs, for example, is fixed by a computer in Brussels and then transmitted to the people who buy, sell and transport them. What is astonishing is that the system works. Of course, there is a need for change, but the agricultural voters are influential and their trade unions are strong. Before we can start bringing prices down by importing food from the U.S., there will be a very long struggle."
Belton K. Johnson, a director of the King Ranch in Texas, had visited the Brussels meat market and reported: "Those women down there were knocking each other around paying twice as much for beef as we pay in the U.S., but we could airlift beef out of Amarillo, Texas, into Brussels tomorrow morning. But they won't let us do it. Agricultural expertise is one of the best things the U.S. has to sell. Yet here in Europe we are fighting with one hand tied to our back."