Gas is no panacea for environmental issues either. Pierre Gadonneix, the president of the World Energy Council, invited me,  along with a handful of others for lunch.

The excitement about gas is there despite the fact that these non-conventional, so-called exciting gas projects are yet in pipeline only. In its Global Gas Challenge report, Ernst & Young said the long-term viability of non-conventional gas projects “is still maturing.” On the demand side, uncertainties persist about the pace of global economic recovery and expanded use of natural gas in the long term; on the supply side more clarity is needed on policies to reduce carbon emissions, the report added.

And yet at the Energy Congress, there were talks of energy from all sources. Solar to wind and hydro and from geothermal to coal, everything under the sun was in the spotlight. And rightly so!

The world needs energy from all resources. Today there are more than 2 billion people deprived of energy. They need energy that is cheap and constantly available. The contribution of renewable and alternatives has to increase. After all fossil fuels are a finite source — none can argue.

Think big, energy leaders were told in Montreal. “There is a tremendous amount of energy out in the universe,” Steve Mac-Lean, head of the Canadian Space Agency, said during a speech that urged delegates to look beyond the boundaries of Earth. That untapped energy is manifest in such things as black holes, said MacLean who himself circled this “fragile yet resilient” planet during space missions in 1992 and 2006. “We know that black holes exist ... that they drive our galaxies but we don’t fully understand them (yet). But the important thing to recognize is there is more energy out there on the head of a pin than one could imagine. “And you can drive that power (for use) on the Earth for a long, long time,” he argued.

Space assets are already collecting massive amounts of precise data which can help find new energy sources on earth or track energy use and climate change. There are now 70 Earth observation satellites but in 10 years that number is expected to grow to 300, he noted.

In the meantime, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, is also working on ways to free as much as possible the crude available for exports. Saudi Aramco is branching out in new directions. “Unconventional” sources are being tapped too. And this includes shale gas — which has been reported mostly from North America. But these exist here too. Backed by a $130 billion investment program, the strategy is to take Aramco into a challenging new phase of development.

“This is going to change the portfolio of Saudi Aramco in very, very significant ways, both in scale and complexity and scope,” Khalid Al-Falih, Aramco CEO, told the Financial Times earlier this week. “With the world relying on Saudi Arabia to meet its growing energy needs, this is exciting. It will have impact on the global markets, as it will free up considerable crude for export markets.”

Saudi Aramco already has had some success with conventional gas, adding 45 trillion cubic feet to its reserves over the past five years. Two new gas plants at Wasit and Karan, with a combined capacity of 4.3 billion cubic feet per day, would also add about 50 percent to the company’s production. The company is also doing its first deep-water exploration, with drilling in the Red Sea set to start in 2012. It is seriously venturing into shale gas, trapped in rocks from which it does not flow easily, and sour gas, contaminated with high levels of hydrogen sulphide.

To meet these challenges, Saudi Aramco has launched a training program, sponsoring 1,500 students in foreign universities. Saudi Arabia also plans to move onto a second phase of gas exploration agreements with oil majors. “We are moving into a second exploration period that will be announced soon, which will go to appraisal and ultimately development, we hope,” Al-Falih told the Financial Times. Yet the fact remains that the world needs Saudi crude — and in abundance. And this can only take place when there is a sort of goodwill and cooperation between the producers and consumers. Transparency — from both sides — is the key to sustaining. The world needs crude — and this cannot and should not be discriminated against — for the common future of this planet earth. Hence, the message by the Aramco CEO to the energy leaders in Montreal — don’t discriminate against select energy resources — was not without reason. He had a point when he questioned the very logic of almost four-and-a-half percent per year on average growth in the global coal consumption in this decade as against just one-and-a-half percent growth in oil consumption during the same period.

This was all the more beyond comprehension especially since attention to climate change and global warming has been on increase on a global scale and indeed coal is a bigger culprit than crude on this account — one cannot argue. This may not be expressed in public, yet one thing gets clear — politics is definitely contributing to this selective discrimination against crude. There have been hints to energy geography in this regard. Dear, old, Halliburton fame, former US Vice President Dick Cheney once remarked, “The problem is that the Good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas reserves in places where there are more democratic governments.” Is this the real issue? Let’s open up!