OPEC: Surging Gas Prices Are ‘Transition Premium’ in Drive Toward Renewables

Soaring gas prices are the cost of the attempted shift to renewable energy sources, OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo told CNBC. 
“I have talked about a new premium that is emerging in the energy markets that I term ‘transition premium’,” Barkindo told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the Gastech conference in Dubai. 
The long-time head of the oil body criticized what he believed was an overly emotional approach to energy policies and climate change, though he did not point a finger at specifically who was to blame for what he described as a “misrepresentation of facts”. 
Barkindo contended that there was “distortion of facts and the science, and the misrepresentation of these facts in the conversation, which is not healthy, because climate change and the energy transition are supposed to be guided by the science”. 
“The intergovernmental panel on climate change is supposed to be the most authoritative body with regard to both climate change and the transition,” he said.