Episode #3: Arjun Murti - "We're in the midst of a MESSY energy transition"

In this latest Geopolitics of Commodities Podcast, Scott sits down with Arjun Murti, Partner of Macro and Energy Policy at Veriten, and an ex-Goldman Sachs Partner and Wall Street analyst, buy-side investor, advisor (Warburg Pincus), and board member (ConocoPhillips) covering the global energy sector.

This was a fantastic conversation, one primarily focused on the global "energy transition" (though that's not really what's happening as explained by Arjun) and digs into the policy missteps of the West, what India and China are doing right (for their own countries) and how the rest of the 7 billion people on the planet without energy abundance or security will drive the next leg up in global fossil fuel demand (peak oil seems nowhere in sight).

Some quotes from the show:

• "When people use the term 'energy transition', there's a perception that we're transitioning out of something, presumably fossil fuels, into something else, which simplistically would be renewables and EVs. And we're pursuing these policies that frankly, I'm not sure are going to lead to any form of transition."

• "The lucky 1 billion, people that live in the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, use a disproportionate amount of energy, and certainly on a per capita basis... and at the barest of minimums, we have 1.4 billion people in China, 1.4 billion in India, and 1.3 billion in the rest of Southeast Asia that are clearly moving up the economic S-curve, and that means they're moving up the energy S-curve, which means they're going to be using whatever forms of energy they can get their hands on that is abundant, that is affordable, and that is geopolitically secure."

• "Europe seems to me to be the example of what NO ONE should aspire to ever do from an energy policy standpoint."

You can also listen on Spotify

Arjun's Super-Spiked publication can be found at https://arjunmurti.substack.com as well as https://veriten.com and Arjun is on Twitter at @ArjunNMurti

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