World Must Spend $540 Billion a Year Looking for Oil and Gas, IEA Says

The world needs to spend some $540 billion a year looking for oil and gas to maintain current output by 2050 as the pace of declines in existing fields increases, according to the International Energy Agency.

Faster decline rates, in part because of an increased global dependency on US shale, mean that the global oil and gas industry “has to run much faster just to stand still,” the agency’s executive director Fatih Birol said.