The oil and gas industry has had significant highs and lows over the thirty-plus years that we’ve been reporting on it, but this year feels like a turning point, a subtle change of scene signaling that, while certainly still on stage, oil may not remain in the spotlight. At Meet Alaska—a mid-March, one-day oil and gas conference organized by The Alliance—Rowena Gunn, Canada and Alaska Research Analyst for Wood Mackenzie, gave a global oil and gas update, in which she said that longer-term demand for liquids (essentially oil or gas) will peak in 2030 and then go into decline, though demand won’t disappear. Even in accelerated energy transition scenarios, which account for a concerted effort worldwide to pursue other forms of energy over oil and gas, Gunn still anticipates that in 2050 demand will be approximately 30 million barrels of oil per day and approximately 20 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of gas. “Current production decline cannot meet [that] demand, and much new production is needed,” she said.

As is standard with any thirty-year forecast, Gunn underscored throughout her presentation that “large uncertainty remains on the pace of the energy transition,” and even in the short-term, “there is large uncertainty on oil price supply and demand outlooks due to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.”

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has highlighted how truly interconnected the world has become: we all, to some degree, participate in a global market. Since the conflict began, prices of oil and gas have increased, and questions about energy supply have been commonplace: What kind of energy do we want to pursue? How do we want to produce it? Where do we want it produced, and by whom? Those questions are driven by cost, security, and social responsibility. However many dollars and cents one may need to pay, there’s a global understanding that energy can never be cost free, and those costs influence the energy picture.

In Alaska, forward thinkers are looking at a range of options: the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation and Qilak LNG are both exploring ways to get stranded North Slope gas to market; Copper Valley Electric Association is collaborating with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation to determine the feasibility of a micro modular reactor energy system; ORPC and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough are launching a test of a hydrokinetic (tidal energy) project at Port Mackenzie; and multiple parties around the state are researching the development of ammonia and hydrogen as the energy carriers of the future.

It may not be many years off that the managing editor for Alaska Business will plan an “Energy” special section instead of “Oil and Gas.” Whatever the name of the section, I’d bet on any odds that it will still have an oil and gas article (or two) within it. We may have already seen a peak for oil and gas, but the industry’s story certainly isn’t over.