Peter Newell: Why Some Countries Are Leaving Oil and Gas in the Ground
Energi Media
7,207 views
Canada is betting on more oil production, more LNG exports and new infrastructure. But a growing group of countries has taken the opposite approach: deliberately limiting fossil-fuel production.
Markham Hislop speaks with Professor Peter Newell of the University of Sussex about new research asking a deceptively simple question: why would governments voluntarily leave potentially profitable oil and gas in the ground?
Newell and his colleagues examine first movers including Denmark, Costa Rica, Colombia and the United Kingdom. Their research finds that supply-side policies can emerge when reserves are declining, alternative industries are growing, political coalitions shift, or governments decide the risks of long-lived fossil-fuel investment outweigh the benefits.
The conversation turns to Canada, where governments and industry continue to argue for expanding production and export infrastructure. Newell warns that shifting global demand can turn expensive infrastructure into stranded assets and argues that countries dependent on fossil-fuel revenues need long-term plans for economic diversification, workers and communities.
The discussion also covers fossil-fuel subsidies, rent-seeking, the role of finance, petrochemicals as a source of future oil demand, electrification, industrial policy and the need for governments to give investors clear, durable signals about the direction of energy policy.
Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and lead of the SUS-POL research programme.
His 2026 paper with Lukas Slothuus, Freddie Daley and Daniela Soto Hernández is titled “Why do countries adopt supply-side policies? The international political economy of fossil fuel phaseouts.”
Chapters
00:00 Canada’s supply-side bet
00:54 Why study limits on fossil-fuel supply?
02:11 Denmark, Costa Rica and other first movers
04:12 Why Canada chose the opposite path
05:41 Prosperity narratives and stranded-asset risk
07:54 Public money, infrastructure and rent seeking
11:22 Why governments become dependent on fossil-fuel revenue
13:13 Diversification and the importance of alternatives
15:15 Is the oil and gas expansion era ending?
17:33 Petrochemicals and the search for new oil demand
19:39 How countries plan economic transitions
23:06 Investors need signals that are “long, loud and legal”
25:54 Finance, tipping points and stranded assets
27:01 “Show your math”: testing future demand
29:50 Canada’s global responsibility
31:13 Mark Carney, climate policy and fossil-fuel expansion
#Canada #OilAndGas #EnergyTransition #FossilFuels #Electrification #IndustrialPolicy #ClimatePolicy #PeterNewell #Energy
20 Comments
They KNOWINGLY caused death and the Climate Change Crisis! Their underreported emissions and their products are poison! Why are they not in jail? I am sure that poisoning people is illegal?
Why are we still subsidizing the most profitable industry ever? We have better alternatives! WTF? Madness on top of Corruption! How much solar would those subsidies buy?
Do we subsidize the Tobacco Industry? Why did we stop smoking in Hospitals?
🇨🇦💪
Yes, and if they get their way THE WHOLE COUNTRY WILL REGRET IT.
I provoked an angry response from Charlie Angus a while back because I advocated "not poking the bear".
What did I mean? Provoking TRUMP may get him to send tanks into Canada.
Unthinkable? Masked gunmen are executing Americans in the street, I suggest you revisit what is unthinkable.
Trump and his inner circle are quite willing to do the unthinkable
There is actually a sociology theorem about this (people underestimating how bad other people can be) but I can't recall the reference.
My take on Carney is he's making the PRAGMATIC choices, which aren't ALWAYS the ones we would like.
Of course, they abandoned the idea.
If we are to meet ANY climate temperature goal, there will be declining global demand, and no market for those FFs.
FF demand will have to decrease by the following percentages every year to stop warming at these temperatures:
1.5 degrees C: -17%/yr for 6 years
1.7 degrees C: -4%/yr for 25 years
2.0 degrees C: -2%/yr for 50 years
And that’s assuming that we start reducing demand this year.
Building additional FF infrastructure now, assumes that we are NOT going to globally try to stop global warming.
Any signature on deals to expand FF infrastructure is a signature on a global sui… note.
Get real.
Peter Newell: Why Some Countries Are Leaving Oil and Gas in the Ground
Energi Media
7,207 views
Canada is betting on more oil production, more LNG exports and new infrastructure. But a growing group of countries has taken the opposite approach: deliberately limiting fossil-fuel production.
Markham Hislop speaks with Professor Peter Newell of the University of Sussex about new research asking a deceptively simple question: why would governments voluntarily leave potentially profitable oil and gas in the ground?
Newell and his colleagues examine first movers including Denmark, Costa Rica, Colombia and the United Kingdom. Their research finds that supply-side policies can emerge when reserves are declining, alternative industries are growing, political coalitions shift, or governments decide the risks of long-lived fossil-fuel investment outweigh the benefits.
The conversation turns to Canada, where governments and industry continue to argue for expanding production and export infrastructure. Newell warns that shifting global demand can turn expensive infrastructure into stranded assets and argues that countries dependent on fossil-fuel revenues need long-term plans for economic diversification, workers and communities.
The discussion also covers fossil-fuel subsidies, rent-seeking, the role of finance, petrochemicals as a source of future oil demand, electrification, industrial policy and the need for governments to give investors clear, durable signals about the direction of energy policy.
Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and lead of the SUS-POL research programme.
His 2026 paper with Lukas Slothuus, Freddie Daley and Daniela Soto Hernández is titled “Why do countries adopt supply-side policies? The international political economy of fossil fuel phaseouts.”
Chapters
00:00 Canada’s supply-side bet
00:54 Why study limits on fossil-fuel supply?
02:11 Denmark, Costa Rica and other first movers
04:12 Why Canada chose the opposite path
05:41 Prosperity narratives and stranded-asset risk
07:54 Public money, infrastructure and rent seeking
11:22 Why governments become dependent on fossil-fuel revenue
13:13 Diversification and the importance of alternatives
15:15 Is the oil and gas expansion era ending?
17:33 Petrochemicals and the search for new oil demand
19:39 How countries plan economic transitions
23:06 Investors need signals that are “long, loud and legal”
25:54 Finance, tipping points and stranded assets
27:01 “Show your math”: testing future demand
29:50 Canada’s global responsibility
31:13 Mark Carney, climate policy and fossil-fuel expansion
#Canada #OilAndGas #EnergyTransition #FossilFuels #Electrification #IndustrialPolicy #ClimatePolicy #PeterNewell #Energy
California listener here and I see the dark side of fossil fuel cartel and electric utility monopoly economic and political power. The corrupt oligarchs who run those industries have captured our state and national governments, leaving citizens without a seat at the political table. That is a significant and active, political security harm to citizens everywhere where energy oligarchs have become the government, but neglect everything except protecting oil profits.
We are also increasingly vulnerable to economic enslavement by monopoly rent seeking and profiteering. It is insane that so much of the energy used to power our industry, homes and transportation is controlled by just a handful of petrostates and oil companies that are often more economically and politically powerful than the countries in which they began.
Then there is the fact that my property insurance has quadrupled because of the rapidly worsening climate crisis and resulting fires.
I’m looking out the window at a stack of hard work. A pallet of 36 panels and several batteries that I’ll put on one of our rentals homes. And it’ll completely replace the energy from natural gas (heating) and electricity (lights, cooling, running pumps and machinery), and gasoline for a few vehicles. Hey, the advantage of California, we get enough sunshine that if you install enough solar and batteries, we can take buildings and vehicles functionally off grid and off of fossil fuels.
If we were really honest about the costs to citizens abd societies of using fossil fuels and enriching the worst oligarchs abd despots and criminals amongst us, we would already be using 80% less oil, coal and gas than we are now. But we prefer to enrich the monsters who run Exxon, etc., rather than look after the security and well being and wealth of our citizens.