 Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. I'm Hila Rasul, Director of Planetary Politics at New America. This is a very timely and important conversation, so I'm very happy to moderate it today. OPEC is celebrating its 60th anniversary and it's the rapidly changing global energy landscape. It is also almost exactly 50 years since the 1973 energy crisis that took place as a result of geopolitical conflicts that is not too dissimilar from what is happening today. We are well into the second era of Russia's war against Ukraine and have been facing a new kind of energy politic, especially in Europe. And we are also just coming off of one of the more contentious cops we have seen in recent years, mostly because of who hosted it and how fossil fuels took center stage. So lots to talk about and with an incredible panel. Today, we are joined by Amy Myers-Jaff, Director of Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University. We are joined by Koshik Deb, Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. And Carolyn Cassane, Associate Dean and Professor at the Center of Global Affairs at NYU. So again, welcome to you all. And so as we're just talking about, we have just hot off the presses received some of the final language coming out of COP 28, the Conference of the Parties on Climate. There was a lot of negativity around who hosted, what their intent was and all the oil lobbyists who came to the party. In some ways, this can be viewed in a positive light. It also disposed how climate policy has been captured by the fossil fuel industry. And honestly, I've never seen media coverage of a long multilateral conference in this way. So I would love to turn to each one of you for your sense on what transpired over the last few weeks. And so I'll turn and then just, you know, the language coming out just this morning. So, Amy, I'll turn to you first for, you know, what your thoughts are on some of the language we're seeing and everything that kind of led up to this moment and what we can expect coming after it. Well, I think a lot was made about, you know, OPEC sending a letter and weighing in and, you know, should they be weighing in and what is their interest. And it led to some calls that maybe having every single country in the world have to agree to every single word that comes forward might not be really what the best process is. Because at some point, this group was either going to lose the coalition of island nations and high coalition, the coalition that wants the most, you know, highest, most ambitious action. Or it was going to lose these sort of Petro States, you know, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and so forth, who were not supportive of the phase out of fossil fuels language. And it took many days of compromise, including, you know, having the conference run beyond the stated scheduled date for closure. And now I think there's going to be a post mortem about the process. Some people are saying this is very historic because at least there was a definitive statement about the transition away from fossil fuels, which kind of implies that fossil fuels are the problem. Which, you know, other wording might not have so categorically put on the record. Whereas other people are saying, listen, the funding that's needed to help the global south achieve the ambitious targets that were set for renewable energy was not really forthcoming systems, other kinds of systems that are needed were not really forthcoming. There were quite a few pledges made to the new loss and damage funds, so that could be seen as an accomplishment of the meeting. But it's still well, well, well below what's needed for countries to respond to this, you know, terrible problem of loss and damage from the heat waves and flooding and other kind of catastrophic events we're already seeing. So I'm not sure one can give an A in the report card, even though some people are using the word historic, because they're just were it lacked ambition compared to what the moment might have hope people would rise to. Thank you and turning to you, Caroline, I know you've been watching the negotiations closely and, you know, it's been hard to kind of parcel the language that's in the document that we see. Yeah, I think Amy did a great job in terms of giving us sort of the high points or the low points right if you're sort of looking at the kind of I would say it was much ado about nothing in terms of the the final document specific to fossil fuels. You know, as Amy highlighted, you know, there was a lot of ambition around getting phase out into the document phase out to not happen nor did phase down. And I look at transition away from fossil fuels, which is kind of the language that was that that that was used at the kind of in the end. As already what has been kind of on the table that when we talk about energy transition we're talking about a transition away, of course, we're still deeply entrenched in a fossil fuel system 80% of the world's primary energy is, you know, comes from fossil fossil energies. The Saudi Energy Minister this morning in an interview said, you know, the document, the agreement really ultimately will mean nothing in terms of Saudi policy going forward as well as I think you're going to see it across the OPEC countries right in the OPEC, we're talking about the United States. I think what's also interesting is, you know, United States, Canada, the UK and Norway were pushing for stronger language, we're actually pushing to have phase out in the final agreement. Again, kind of going back to what Amy said, you know, the small island nations were really lobbying very hard and quite rightly given the impacts that they see from climate change. But the United States is seeing record high oil production this year. I don't think there's any sort of sign in the near future that the United States is going to phase down. I think we're also seeing higher production in Canada. I think Norway is also so I thought it was very interesting that some of the countries that were sort of at least some of the climate envoys in place representing those countries are in fact going full throttle in their own oil and natural gas production where where there is that capacity. I think for me, one of the big sort of maybe interesting highlights is the methane pledge. And I think that is something very meaningful and that will have an impact. And, you know, you saw many both national oil companies as well as international oil and gas companies that are committing to a pretty significant reduction in methane emissions, which is doable. It's a feasible. I think we will see it. We even saw a company like ExxonMobil that had been on the sidelines of the UN climate UN methane pledge reporting has now committed to it. So, yeah, so I think that that's that's that's something that I think is is a plus. And a lot of the other things are tripling of renewable energy capacity a lot on in terms of nuclear energy. And I think they're great pledges. I think the realities that we're looking at in 2024 and beyond economic realities and economic headwinds as well as political headwinds I think will be something that will kind of, you know, can be part of the discussion that we have today. Yeah, certainly a mixed report card because I want to hear from you on what your sense was coming out of COP 28. And I know that you just this morning traveled back from India. And so what the energy is amongst, you know, some lower middle income countries, some of the BRICS countries coming out of this as well. Banksy lab is great to be here and really the way kind of Amy and Carolyn described what came out of COP or what did not come out of COP is pretty much the best summary that you would get of course over the next few weeks there will be tons and tons of people that will be written and lots and lots of analysis looking at each comma and full stop and the and and that's there in the draft agreement. That's there in the great text, but in the end kind of a lot of it boils down to as Carolyn was saying, Prince Abdul Aziz said this morning, does it really matter. And this is essentially kind of a non binding international text which unless actually translated into national policies or national legislation isn't really that material, especially when there is in every cop and very unfortunate adversarial negotiation that happens between the have and the have nots in places in the global south, especially in global south which is kind of big and emerging and not, you know, the likes of the small island states, there is a very strong current about whether anything needs to be done in terms of climate action in a large African country or a large Asian country, especially when the gap in energy consumption on a per capita basis or emissions basis is so vast. There is a finite carbon budget, but the question of who gets to use up the remaining carbon budget and whether the developed world needs to evacuate some space for the rest of the world to grow is a very significant part of what a country like India or the rest of the developing world feels and that's kind of I think important to recognize whenever we are having a conversation like this around a cop. This was my first cop after 15 years, I mean frankly I had given up on this process, and essentially kind of it's really turned out to be you know one of these climate festivals where everyone kind of comes together has their boots has meetings meals. It by itself is a super emitting event by, you know, it should kind of 70,000 or 80,000 people in a city and the city did not even link or kind of absorb that it's remarkable but one thing that I kind of note that came out of this cop, which, given that this is the 60th anniversary of OPEC is that this is possibly the only win OPEC has had this year. Despite everything that they've tried to do to manage oil markets cut production voluntary agreed, forcing smaller members to take additional cuts trying to enforce discipline in the market. They really haven't been able to do anything in terms of being able to manage oil markets. But if they've had one notional win, it's just that this one agreed text kind of reflects a lot of their priorities, which I would say is a big achievement coming out of cop for oil producing nation. So I think I would add one point to our discussion just to elaborate a little bit. So the language could be material and in one community in particular. How does the multilateral agencies, development banks and commercial banks, international commercial banks interpret this sentence? Because had there been a clear phase down sentence, it would have been very hard for countries to get access to the capital to continue to invest in fossil fuel production and use. So the question is, I think it'll be interesting to see in the coming weeks, was the language strong enough to cast a glow of risk over the financing of new coal fired power plants of new oil and gas development, new LNG export terminals, etc. You know, that to me is really where the language matters in signaling the sort of big players in the market, not so much countries that we're going to consider their domestic economy and are going to use their own revenue to fund what they do for their domestic economy. Because a lot of countries are not in that position. A lot of countries are needing the banks to finance what they do or they're hoping that the World Bank or some other development bank is going to help them finance what they want to do. And whether this language is enough to have the financial institutions be able to say, this is too risky, we don't want to finance it. Because remember, just to use a US example, but I'm sure it's true in India. In India you have reliance and some other big players investing in green hydrogen now instead of in refining. So the real question is, if I'm a bank and a company comes to me in the United States and they want to finance a new LNG export terminal, am I going to be better inclined to figure that it's going to take them five, six, seven years to put that online and then I need it to be financed to pay back over many years? Now is that language sort of making that seem like it's a bad investment? Or should that company, should I be encouraging that company to do green ammonia with those same billions of dollars? So to me that's where the rubber might meet the road to use an American expression on the wording that came from the global stock take. And then also one has to consider that people are already casting forward two years to the climate meeting in Brazil and saying that we're going to be further along and we might be able to get much stronger language by then. And so, you know, I think that trajectory issue when it comes to finance might be the most significant thing that would come out of the language from this year. Just to highlight though, I mean, Brazil is looking at it's increasing its own oil production, right? Petrobras has already put out a plan. So I don't disagree with you, Amy. I just, I kind of share Kaushik's, you know, a little kind of sort of somber note about, you know, kind of the realities here. And even going back to, you know, we've been talking about this idea of stranded assets, right? That the banks are going to stop funding, you know, funding fossil projects. And, you know, I think we've seen some examples of that. But at the same time, we're seeing increased production, you know, we're seeing China, we're seeing a lot of countries that have more coal build out. We're seeing here in the United States, some very ambitious LNG projects that have, you know, gotten the, you know, the requisite funding. So I guess I'm a little bit more cautious about, you know, the signalling that the agreement is going to have for the financial institutions. I'll turn it over to Kaushik on this topic. Yeah. I mean, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a kind of nuanced thing here in the sense that at least as far as the multilateral developmental bank system exists today, or even existed before Dubai, it was hardly going to be any or any World Bank or EDB investments in any kind of fossil fuels, even if it was the role of gas as a transition fuel. I mean, that's kind of been clear in terms of their lending strategies, formally also laid down as kind of their requirements. A fantastic example to me here is nuclear. I mean, no multilateral developmental bank has kind of come forward and kind of said that we will support nuclear in any part of the world just because. And here we have a pledge with a fairly significant number of countries at COP saying that we want to triple nuclear as a way of decarbonization and it's kind of hard to imagine that anyone from the multilateral developmental world will come and do this. Now here is a situation where, you know, the Chinese and China-led issue in investment banks and those kind of investment makers could become significant. The Japanese investment, the Japanese developmental arm could become kind of significant and, you know, make that transition and make that change happen. But at least one thing that's kind of come out of this COP that's helpful for the multilateral developmental banks is that they've been given a fairly clear signal that they need to move forward in ways that they can help smaller countries, smaller developing countries to start de-risking green projects. And that, I mean, that's material, that's significant. I can kind of understand that's like way off our open conversation, but that could be a game changer, especially if you're looking at a developmental paradigm where we want to increase prosperity without increasing the carbon or the energy footprint by very much. Well, that kind of leads into my next question because in the absence of, you know, the MDBs getting their act together on financing the transition, you know, we're seeing more investments continuing to go into creating more demand for oil and gas, especially in developing countries. I mean, during these last two weeks, we also just found out that more about Saudi Arabia's global investment plan to create demand for its oil, gas and developing countries. So this plan itself falls in line with the perception that it's not fair to expect developing countries or economies to leapfrog the use of fossil fuels in their path to development. But how much is this truly rooted in reality and how much of it is narrative in this information? So let me just say something about the sort of not saying that the Saudis are saying this, but just in general the disinformation because actually the successful electrification cases in on the African continent have not been natural gas and not have not been oil or even coal. For the most part, we've seen a huge deployment of geothermal, successful deployment of hydro across the continent and for rural electrification, there is an increased understanding that the multilaterals and others need to come in and finance, distribute energy resources, which predominantly might wind up being solar. And so, you know, I do think there's the reality on the ground, which is countries like Kenya and Ethiopia and others are providing more universal access to electricity, literally through renewables. And the sort of storyline that somehow it needs to be fossil fuels, which is, you know, if you take the example of Nigeria, Nigeria is one of the premier countries in Africa that has been unable, has the actually highest number of people lacking energy access on the continent. And they of course, flare natural gas at again one of the one of the top global flares. And so I think we have to separate out each national profile and what countries can really achieve with more ambition and not, you know, create this belief, which, you know, was sort of backed up by, you know, I'm not going to say who but you know backed up by the industry oil industry in general, that somehow people will be poor, if they do not have access to oil. When you know that's probably not true and what we're actually seeing I think is every time OPEC raises the price to a very high level. What do we get, we get repeated financial and banking crises, which of course we saw really prominently when OPEC raised the price of fuel to high in 2007 2008. But even, you know, a year ago, you know, one could argue that some of the regional bank failures and some of the questions about stability of European banks, and a lot of the extreme debt situation that we're seeing among countries in the global south, you know, countries that I'm recently, you've had countries that are not able to pay service their debt. A lot of that actually comes from this inflated oil price and its impact on inflation, driving interest rates higher, and, and the, you know, corollary cycle, which, you know, just to, you know, throw it out there for your listeners. When I, I, you know, written a book Oil Dollars, Debt and Crises, and we, my co-author, Mahmoud Al-Gamal and I have systematically shown the interrelationship between geopolitical events and this cycle, showing that it's part of the cycle, it's endogenous to the cycle, it's not some thing that swoops down from the outside and throws the cycle off. And indeed, you know, one could interpret Russia's invasion in 2022 of Ukraine as part of that constant violent cycle that comes from the amassing of oil revenues and then spending it instead of on development and health and education, other kinds of services for the population, spending it on arms, arms, arms. And then using those arms against the neighboring country, which is a repeating pattern we've seen, you know, most lately by Venezuela, announcing that, of course, land that has been, in their view, disputed, but the international system recognizes as part of Diana, requires them to reclaim it. I'll turn over to Koshik, but I'd love to kind of pull the thread on this topic as well. I just wanted to kind of say that, I mean, Amy is absolutely right that it's a very disingenuous comment from the oil producing countries and companies that they need to continue to produce oil and gas so that the rest of the world can develop. I mean, for heaven's sake, what were they doing for the last 40 years as the rest of the world kind of pretty much just meander through low growth and, you know, very low level. Low growth that they caused, yeah, low growth that they caused. Absolutely. So, that's an argument that I'm kind of as violently opposed to as much as I am opposed to asking developing countries, especially low income, low energy consuming developing countries to transition to green. Right away. Amy, you kind of touched on this. I mean, in some ways, some can see like what happened at COP and the recent OPEC meetings as maybe not a last ditch effort, but some show of desperation by some OPEC countries and the fossil fuel industry. I'm like, they're seeing the kind of path, they're not too happy with it. And so they're kind of turning to these alternative strategies, but this is also kind of playing out of the geopolitical sphere as well. And so I know that you have some really interesting thoughts on, especially the last couple of years on the changing phase of conflict as a result of this kind of desperation. So let me, you know, put countries into different buckets. You know, I believe that the countries of the Gulf are really well positioned to pivot to energy strategies that will be successful for them as exporters and to, you know, buttress their economies. And I think some of those countries, whether it's Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates, you know, are starting to actually move in that direction. And I think they, you know, quote unquote, get it on some level when it comes to their own plan, right? Where I really see the problem is when countries who do not have a strategy and who have had internationally powerful, you know, because they were important exporters, see this transition to a potential loss of that geopolitical power over time. And to have that political power deteriorate over time doesn't mean that will demand doesn't even have to peak per se or, you know, we have to know, you know, when we're going to, you know, use the phase down language. You know, what really only has to happen, which I think is already happening, is that when the price of oil goes up, countries have options about things they can do to decouple their economy from oil. That might be having a more aggressive program and renewable energy as we saw Europe embark on after they had the conflict with Russia over natural gas supply. That might be, as Kaushik and others have mentioned, you know, India also transitioning to electrification and hydrogen and, you know, various strategies as part of their green industrialization programs, even China, very strong green industrialization pathway for their economy. So, you know, it's the we could just all buy electric cars or we could put in more renewable energy or we did put battery storage to go with all the rooftop solar in Germany. Things that actually happen as the price of energy gets too high, that's based on fossil fuels. Those kind of steps actually do undermine how much the energy weapon would be valid. So, you know, I get it Russia just used the energy weapon and it looked, you know, pretty material. But maybe they used it because they perceive that, you know, five years from now or 10 years from now they weren't going to be able to use it. And the question I think we have to ask ourselves as we look at the energy transition is how vulnerable is the international system to a breakdown in for countries that are used to being powerful, now turning to hard power to assert themselves where energy power is no longer going to be as effective. And, you know, that could be Russia using its military power. That would be terrible in Venezuela would would now feel free to, you know, re raise some conflict from, you know, 1866. It could be Iran re asserting itself in the region through proxies through violence. And, you know, the question about what do we do to create a deterrence of resort to hard power for countries that are Petro States that might feel that they're losing their influence globally. I think this is this is a serious challenge that the United States and China and other like minded countries that would like to see more lasting peace and less humanitarian disaster really need to focus on. Absolutely. I would like to give you an opportunity to react and then over to Kosha. Yeah, I know so I mean I've had this conversation and yeah no I don't disagree and you know there's kind of a history also associated when you know price price like oil is is is high the price of oil is high that some countries that are, non-democratic tend to sort of feel emboldened right tend to sort of use that you know revenue to help sort of fund conflict and to sort of take action against adversaries as they see it. Yeah, no I don't I don't just count that I think you know since we're talking about OPEC today right we're talking about the OPEC countries. As Amy pointed out and Kaushik has you know pointed out you have some countries the Gulf countries Saudi the UAE Kuwait. They can kind of do a little bit of everything they can continue to produce lots of oil and they will and they will continue to increase production as as you know while they're still an appetite in the world for for oil consumption. And at the same time they are investing in hydrogen they're investing in renewable energy, but I think when you're talking about a Gabon and Equatorial Guinea you're talking about some of the other OPEC countries then as well. I think it's it's you don't see the same picture. So I think in the short term they're all going to sort of try to continue to produce in a market that is still taking their product right and we're still going to look at probably the next 10 years where we'll see higher higher demand when you know when we see peak lots of debate about that. But I think you're also going to see in some ways kind of a bifurcated market. And again bifurcated not in the sense that you know I think you're going to see where countries like Saudi UAE Kuwait they're going to be marketing and they were already started marketing the sort of lower carbon oil. Right it's kind of like who can do the most efficient lowest carbon emitting oil. We're here you were even seeing it in the United States in terms of you know efficiencies. And then you know some countries that are just cannot afford carbon capture they cannot afford any of these other sort of technologies that are going to be integrated into production. So the same way that you've got countries that are happy to take you know Russia's oil even though you know there's it's you know there are sanctions. It's I yeah so I see a really interesting sort of next 10 years in this space and the geopolitics and you know I think I used to live in Russia. One of the things that's very interesting in light of what you know Amy said in terms of hard power. You look at you know just Putin's sort of you know his his when he came into office the price of oil was very low was the late 90s 2000 oil was I think it was like in the teens right so while he's been in power he has seen only like $147 a barrel oil in in 2008 summer of 2008 you know but he's actually been able to sort of as you know and we pointed out sort of really fund and weaponize you know his economy to to take action against Ukraine. So it's I think it's a very it's a very contentious market that we're looking at and I don't see that it's it's and it's not going to change anytime soon I think this transition is is a very long one, and I don't see the United States necessarily to Amy's sort of question is what the United States should do. Yeah I know I think the United States itself is going to continue to capitalize on its own sort of geographic and geopolitical you know geological endowments for the time that we can and to use you know to use our own natural gas and our own ability to export LNG to help to support to help to support Europe to displace Russian Russian gas. But yeah, so I think you know to Jason Bordaus and Megan O'Sullivan's piece in in foreign affairs, you know that's the age of, you know, energy insecurity it's kind of kind of a new type of energy security calculation that I think we're looking at in in the years and I would say the decade at the decade ahead. See Kaushik is ready to also jump in. Yeah, I mean the first thing I just wanted to kind of say something that Amy said and could be a topic of the next webinar that you guys have is describe China and America as being like minded. I don't think anyone's kind of done that for a very long or said that for a very long time in any of the events that I have been at. But to to the point of what OPEC can do and what are their. What are the extent of the power I mean one thing that I kind of now firmly believe in something that we've kind of written over the last few weeks also is that this latest set of production cuts is probably the last roll of dice. In this cycle of production costs that started in October 2022. I don't think it's possible for it does not make sense for these countries, particularly the core OPEC in the Middle East to continue with this strategy for a longer period. Unless of course this is no longer an economic or oil market decision, but something that reflects a closer relationship perhaps with President Putin and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman or, or kind of questions around that. What happened right after COVID and the April 2022 2020 agreement at OPEC plus to cut production. I think is one of those events that tells us what is the best that this group could do in an event where oil demand collapses either falls off or clear for gradually kind of declines and essentially that's the only tool that they have. Apart from their attempts to diversify energy sources etc etc, which kind of they are doing but in the end you know when the Ministry of Energy includes folks who work on oil and gas and solar and nuclear you can imagine what kind of dominates their conversations. I used to live in Riyadh and I worked with the Ministry of Energy quite extensively in the period when oil was minus 40 and thereafter with monthly OPEC plus meetings. And I can, I mean I can assure you that what dominates their conversations is not the next solar power plant. And what these countries end up doing over a longer period is is essentially a very limited set of tools that they have. Now I also recognize that in the end they are the least cost producers globally. They also have the lowest carbon footprint likely. I don't know. I mean but you know so they claim if that is true then it does make sense that the last barrel of oil that will be consumed by a species should come from that region or one of these producers and they like to take pride in saying that they'll be the last person standing in the oil market. And to me I mean I'd say hey that's great. You might produce the last barrel of oil but remind me what would be the price of oil at that point in time and whether that makes sense for you to produce that last barrel of oil still. So it's it's not a it's not a trouble problem that these guys in the Middle East are facing. And if there is no easy resolution around this in terms of managing a transition a collapse in oil production capacity in this part of the region would mean terrible things for the entire planet and that's kind of something that we just need to be careful about as well. Just kind of follow up on Cossack's point because I think it's very an interesting one in terms of if you think about OPEC sort of strategy to date and that they're the production cuts of course you know with Saudi kind of really in the driver seat that they haven't done a lot right today Brent is at 75 right Saudi would ideally like to see $80 barrel oil for its own budget and for its own sort of grand sort of plans for 2030 and beyond. But I think there's also been a little bit of the underappreciated side that that I think there was the idea that at this point because of coven because of investment cuts that we saw years prior that today we'd have a much tighter supply on the supply side and we've seen increase in US production increase in Canadian production increase in Guineas production Brazil so you've you had some of the non OPEC countries that have actually been able to increase production to add to supply, which, again, is has you know what does what is OPEC strategy moving forward I would agree with Cossack that they've kind of have used the they've used the production cut hand now a few times without the results that they were probably hoping to hoping to achieve in terms of the price uptake even even in the face of a lot of geopolitical tension right the ongoing war, you know, between Russia and Ukraine disruptions in the Middle East, and still right still you know you still have a kind of a suppressed price. I think because it, we do have a pretty well supplied market and that doesn't mean that it's going to continue to be well supplied but I think for the, for the time being we're not going to see unless we see something some larger geopolitical disruption, given the, given the economic outlook for China, you know, we're probably are not going to see higher prices in in the coming year. Okay, let me just say one thing I just kind of want to say is that for for OPEC or the Saudis to assume that they would cut production and they would not be someone else would kind of fill up that space is extremely short sighted in every cycle of production cuts over the last 40 years. Every time OPEC plus and OPEC has cut production there has been an increase in supply from everyone else in the world, and to assume that 2023 or 2022 would be different for any reason. It kind of, at least to me, I kind of don't understand that logic, of course kind of demand weakness is a very important part of the equation and pretty much explains where prices are where they are. But to assume that you would cut production, and they won't be anyone else who kind of want to come and take advantage of that space that you've indicated is, I can't even find an appropriate like word for that. So this is what I would say to that. I'm glad that you, you know, raise that point because very important point. So, you know, here's really the question. You know, I was on a conference call, a zoom call with some very important analysts from Russia and some other producing countries, and and they were making these very bold statements about where global oil demand was. And, and I do think that you have some analysts that have put out and including OPEC itself put out these big numbers. And what I said to the people on this call, and then we have this very quiet moment where we talked about like, you know, how low did I think real demand was. You know, you could keep putting out these forecasts with these very high demand numbers, but you know eventually, if the demand is not actually there, you know the oil winds up in storage. And, and you can't fake it like there's a physical market, you know, you can tell people numbers and, you know, I think OPEC has been very effective and the Saudi Minister of South extremely effective. He's stated that he's going to push speculators out of the market. He's been effective in pushing speculators out of the market, and that helps with, you know, market stability in general. And, you know, OPEC says, you know, they're trying to find this Goldilocks price that's not too high, not too low. And, you know, again, you know, probably a good aspiration. But the problem is, if everybody's overstating demand. And, and, you know, you had this period over the summer where we're trying to stock building a lot and, you know, people were sort of questioning as to why, you know, what was it economics driven was it geopolitical they were trying to, you know, help the Russians with the cheaper crude. You know, unclear I think at this point what their actual 100% motivation was, but the answer is, can't do that forever. You know, Chinese stock market has absolutely collapsed in the last couple of months the Chinese are dealing with new ideas about how to fight inflation. And so, you know, there were at this sort of pivotal moment, you know, both for OPEC and for everyone, which is, are we going to be able to keep the global economy stable. How are we going to help countries that have this increased debt load. You know, especially countries that have suffered loss and damage countries like Pakistan, and Tanzania and others who've had really catastrophic events. And, and, and, and how does OPEC fit into that. Because if they, I think correctly what I hear when I talk to people from the Gulf is that they understand this problem of headline inflation. They understand that it's important to make sure the banking system remains, you know, stable, and that they calculate all of that when they look at the oil price. That's a good thing if that's going to be the case. And, you know, but, but, you know, in the end, you know, you can keep the market up for six months when demand is actually lower than people are thinking it is. But like I said, eventually, if the demand's not there, there will be this moment where it's very hard to keep the market stable as, as Carol and you and Kaushik are saying. And, you know, if we're at that moment, you know, what does OPEC do, you know, would further cuts really change the sentiment in the market. You know, they're counting on, you know, if anybody was counting on a bad winter, you know, it's an El Nino year. So in places where there are stock markets that look at oil futures, it's probably going to be mild. So far in the United States, for example, it's been milder than expected. Right. And so that just makes it, you know, harder to, you know, keep this sort of image of stability building and build on the success that OPEC had in the last year. Keeping prices closer to their target that maybe others might have expected them to be able to do. And that's a very small amount. I'd love to dig into that a little more. But I also want to give some space to our audience for some of their questions. And although I think we've kind of hit on these points, I want to share this question that's come in. Has OPEC arrived at the point of realizing the need to reinvent itself to become more effective in the evolving energy sector? We're seeing a little bit of both, but I'd love to hear from you all. Well, I think there was, I mean, I think there was a reckoning, right? It's been about seven years since you've had like OPEC plus, I think there was a reckoning that OPEC, as the 13 member countries was not going to be enough, right. So where you have add on Russia, you add on other countries, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, which interestingly enough is where COP 29 is going to be held. You know, so you have now kind of the 20, the group of 23. And part of that was to sort of boost OPEC's strength and to kind of give it a little bit more market muscle, to kind of coordinate where it could to coordinate some of the production supply, sort of looking at the overall global demand and how to respond. But again, you know, I think you have a lot of countries, Russia of other countries that, you know, still will act on on on their own, and will act with their own sort of national interest first and foremost. But I do think that, you know, OPEC has been in a sort of a period of kind of its own transition as a as an organization that isn't isn't hasn't isn't starting now, but it's been an ongoing kind of rethink recalibration. Because you have, you have, I mean, the United States was a very disrupting force for the way that OPEC always sort of acted in the market, but now you have, you know, a country that's producing almost 13 million barrels of oil a day. Right, that's, you know, so I do think that OPEC will have to continue to recalibrate its, its position and to Koshik's, though, point earlier, I think some of the instruments that they have and that they've used in the past may be more limited in the future. Does anybody else want to respond. So one thing that I kind of do also add to this is that not everyone is equal in OPEC, right, kind of there are the folks who can produce and produce more and then there are countries that have had another investment in poor management for a very, very long period of time. And those countries are in some ways kind of less and less relevant. So to Caroline's point that, you know, becoming OPEC plus from OPEC was an important piece of the strategy to continue to retain their relevance. There is a fair case, and this might be a kind of a controversial point to put out, they might, there's a fair case for kind of shedding some of the nightwights in the coalition, just to kind of make this group more effective in terms of its efficiency decision making going forward. And the one interesting piece around the last OPEC meeting and the decision of Brazil to join OPEC as an observer to try and, in some sense, I'm paraphrasing here, but to convince OPEC plus to become more energy transition friendly is kind of an interesting development. We'll kind of see how far that goes, especially with Brazil's own aspiration to increase oil production as well as to go, you know, hosting COP in a couple of years. And everything else that President Lula is trying to do in terms of preserving the rate for us and boosting their own green credentials. It's one of those things that you kind of suddenly have a left-wing player in OPEC plus who could potentially be an interesting voice in that room. So, so I just, I love those points both for both Kaschik and Carolyn. So I just want to add this one last point because I can't add much to what they've said, everything they've said is, you know, very interesting. I guess what I would say is if I had a nickel for every time the oil industry, RIT Lodge, has made up a story for itself. And that story every three years is that there's some reason why we're not having enough drilling and therefore we're not going to have enough supply and therefore the price is going to $200 a barrel. And it's always three years away. It's always we're not doing enough drilling right now. And in three years we're going to have this really terrible, terrible, horrible outcome. And, you know, we never get to that, you know, three year moment. Well, I mean, sometimes we get to that three year moment in terms of prices going up, but that's usually because there's some underestimation of some demand surge that we weren't expecting like after COVID in 2021. The economies of everywhere in the world recovered faster than everybody expected. And so oil demand went up over 5 million barrels a day in one year, and the market had trouble calibrating that. So, you know, or China in 2006, you know, to 2007 say, you know, big, big economic driver for global economy. So, you know, sometimes we have these moments where it looks like those stories are true, but it's, as you pointed out, I mean, that has not been the pattern. The pattern is where it's a cyclical industry. It performs in a cyclical way. Companies say they're going to counter cyclically invest, but then they really don't. Companies say they're going to have a strategy. OPEC has a strategy and the strategy works for a while. And then when we start to get towards the downside of the cycle, if they've raised prices too high, you know, they say we're going to know when there's demand destruction, we'll know when to pull back. But do they believe their own stories about they're not being demand destruction from, you know, digital or from clean tech? Because I think part of the problem is there has been a lot of demand destruction that they don't recognize. So, you know, Bloomberg, New Energy Finance and others have done these estimates that actually global oil demand would have been a million and a half to two million barrels a day higher in the last two years, but for the high absorption of EVs. And now there's this story going around in the media that EV sales are way down. But actually that story is incorrect, not only in the United States, but globally. EV sales are way up this year and are going to be a record year in 2023. So the story that, you know, we've hit the wall on EVs and nobody wants an EV anymore. That story is not true. One in four new cars in the state of California, which has 93,000 charging stations are EVs. So, you know, part of it is whether or not the oil industry and OPEC are willing to get out of their echo chamber and look at real data and make decisions based on real data. I think that's an important note because I recognize that we only have about five minutes and I would love to end kind of on the positive. And, you know, although, you know, not an OPEC country, I think Columbia is a very interesting example of, you know, traditionally like fossil fuel based economy in some ways, putting in place a plan to transition. And I know Amy, you earlier mentioned, you know, there is a difference between OPEC plus countries. You have the Gulf countries who are already starting to think about that transition and have the means to kind of fund that transition. But I think the Columbia case is interesting in particular because it shows that it is still a lower middle income country that is making those plans. So what opportunities do you see or how do you see this kind of example playing out for other OPEC plus countries that might kind of see the light in that way? I mean, it raises interesting questions because there are countries that have already made that transition like Dubai, not a country, but Dubai. And then also, to some extent, you know, Malaysia and Indonesia have sort of moved out of the sort of oil exporter economy to a different kind of economy. And I think that the leaders, political leaders and civic leaders in Columbia really wanted to get off the treadmill of having the economy be good when oil prices were high and bad when oil prices were low. And they really are, you know, thoughtfully engaged in the idea that they have to chart a course on their economy that is disconnected from this volatile cycle. Yeah, but to just to add, but you also have countries like I think Columbia is one, I think Indonesia is another, right, Dubai, where you all were where you were seeing a peak in terms of production, right? Where they kind of add a place where they couldn't, they didn't have a, you know, an upward trend in terms of their own ability to produce. So I think it's a kind of a reckoning with the, with the realities in the ground, right, for and then needing to sort of think about how they diversify and how they move away from the fact that they're not going to be seeing the production that they had seen in the past. So I think Columbia is kind of a case in point and where you're also not getting investment money like foreign foreign investment in to the to the space, but also that they're, you know, to Amy's point that they're all those sort of seeing the the the bright writing on the wall that, you know, better to do it now and to do it in a kind of a more thoughtful way than to sort of be caught, you know, where it's And while you still have some oil revenue to help you diversify to something else. I mean, I think that's really a lesson for all of the OPEC countries, right, is that, you know, instead of just, you know, raising credit card debt, you know, buying to keep your income level the same level. It's like, how do I plan for the future. Right. And I think Columbia has shown an inclination to want to do that. You know, whereas you have other countries that are, you know, very head in the sand, and thinking that, I mean, it's just, you know, if you're a country like Nigeria, and you think that you're a way you're going to build yourself out of your problems is by forcing the whole continent of Africa to endorse natural gas and and and then, you know, being obstreperous within OPEC and at the climate meetings and so forth I mean that is not going to be a successful strategy for the nation. Right. And, you know, what is your economic plan. Not only to diversify and move away from patterns of the past, but also to cope with increased costs and damages from climate change, which you know a lot of these countries have. So I know that we're about a minute but I want to give some space for some closing remarks and I think Koshia, you wanted to say something. I just wanted to kind of add to what Amy was saying that this is this is kind of front and center in terms of what most energy leaders in each of the OPEC countries wants to do. Manage a transition away from fossil fuels so that they kind of in some sense future prove their economies and are able to still have young people employed in high paying jobs in a world where the world is kind of not consuming as much oil and gas as it used to. The question of course is how quickly can you do that. I mean, for the emirate of Dubai, it took the 2008-09 crisis to make the transformation and about 10 years to make the transformation since then. I mean, essentially today what if you kind of look at the text that came out of Dubai, the Dubai cop, we are kind of asking OPEC countries or oil producers or fossil producers in general to kind of make the transition in the next two or three years. That's a much harder task when 80% of your economy depends on oil revenues or 60% of your economy depends on oil revenues. And then when you kind of get to countries like Nigeria and Angola and Algeria which have historically kind of done much poorly with them with managing their hydrocarbon sector, they are just kind of trying to make sure the lights stay on in the capital city tonight. That's a much more urgent requirement than looking at where the energy transition conversation will be in the year 2030. Well, I know that we're at a time but I really want to express my deepest appreciation for this panel and it's very fascinating conversation I feel that we could go on for hours. But I hope to continue it in some way and form and so I thank you all and wish you all a wonderful holiday season and hope that you can take some time off.