Elon Musk: More Oil and Gas Needed – Or Civilization 'Crumbles'

Elon Musk, who has been championing green energy, has called the switch to sustainable energy “one of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced” and admitted that oil and gas are indispensable at present.

The world must continue to drill for oil and gas to sustain civilization, while developing sustainable sources of energy, entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk said at an energy conference in Norway on Monday.

“Realistically, I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble,” Musk said while addressing the ONS-2022 energy conference in the city of Stavanger.

“Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to [compensate] for Russian oil and gas exports,” the billionaire said.

Asked whether Norway should continue to drill for oil and gas, a very divisive issue broadly contested by the Nordic nation's left-wing parties, Musk said: “I think some additional exploration is warranted at this time.”

Musk called the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy “one of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced”, adding that it would take “some decades to complete”.

The billionaire furthermore mused that offshore wind power generation in the North Sea, combined with stationary battery packs, could become a key source of energy. “It could provide a strong, sustainable energy source in winter,” he said.

Meanwhile, energy prices across Europe and most of the West continue to smash records, aggravating the energy crisis and boosting fears about access to electricity and heating as winter looms. The continent's energy crisis, spurred by slow supplies recovery after the COVID pandemic, has been exacerbated by the self-crippling sanctions the West unleashed on Moscow in a bid to “punish” it for the special operation in Ukraine which it considers as an “occupation”.