Two years in the making, the report commissioned by the country’s National Petroleum Council forecast that world energy demand would increase 50-60% by 2030.

The Office of Fossil Energy’s James Slutz, who co-chaired the study, was in Australia last week to give a series of talks on the topic.

He told PetroleumNews.net the study found this growth could be hindered by political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of a trained workforce.

“The world isn’t running out of energy resources, but there are accumulating risks to continuing expansion of oil and gas production from the conventional sources relied upon historically,” Slutz said.

He saw a greater role in the energy mix for alternatives such as oil sands, coal seam methane and shale gas, as well as nuclear, renewables and biofuels.

“There’s a role for renewables, and unconventional oil and gas here in particular,” he said.

“But each of these sources faces significant challenges including safety, environmental, political or economic hurdles.”

He said coal seam methane made up 9% of the US gas market and would continue to grow in importance.

But a lack of infrastructure investment was likely to pose significant problems for the future energy market, he said.

“Infrastructure requirements are very challenging – I think it’s been under-evaluated and under-considered in most of the projections the report looked at,” he said.

Another major finding was the need to moderate energy demand by increasing energy efficiency.

The report, titled Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, is the response to a request in 2005 by US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman to the NPC on the ability of global oil and natural gas supply to keep pace with rising demand through to 2020.

It involved the integration of more than 100 existing energy projections to provide a series of findings and recommendations for the US and global energy market.