JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Warns of ‘Calamity,’ ‘Global Depression’ Without Oil, Gas

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on Capitol Hill on April 10, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Despite the international community’s pledge to depend on renewable energy to achieve its net-zero emissions goal by 2050, the world will need oil and gas for the next 50 years, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

While speaking in an interview with CNBC in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 19, Dimon warned that if the global economy abandoned fossil fuels altogether, there would be a “calamity” and “global depression.”

“We need oil and gas. We need cheaper oil for 50 years. It’s 100 million barrels a day that are used by the world to heat, fuel, feed people,” he said.

In response to host Joe Kernen, who noted that “true climate zealots want to end it now,” Dimon replied, “You then have a calamity, a global depression.”

This isn’t the first time that Dimon has championed the need for oil and gas and lamented about public policymakers trying to shift away from fossil fuels.

In October 2022, he told CNBC that the U.S. government is “getting energy completely wrong.” Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, President Vladimir Putin would inevitably turn off the gas and send crude oil prices higher, Dimon said.

A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, on Nov. 22, 2019. Angus Mordant/Reuters

As energy prices soared in 2022, many poorer nations turned to dirtier fuel sources, including coal-fired power plants.

“We have a longer-term problem now, which is the world is not producing enough oil and gas to reduce coal, make the transition, create security for people. So I would put it in the critical category, and this should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point,” he said.

During an appearance before the House of Representatives in September 2022, Dimon was asked if his bank maintains “a policy against funding new oil and gas products.”

“Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America,” he said.

“We aren’t getting this one right,” Dimon said. “You’ve all seen it because of the high price of oil and gas, particularly for the rest of the world. So you’ve seen everyone going back to coal, not just poor nations like India and China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, but also wealthy nations like Germany, the Netherlands, and France.

“We’ve all learned that energy supply globally is not secure. It’s still precarious.”

Estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that global coal consumption rose by 1.2 percent in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tons in a single year for the first time and topping a previous record made in 2013.

A report from the China Electricity Council suggests that the world’s second-largest economy will add 70 gigawatts of coal-fired power output this year, up 75 percent from a year ago. In 2022, China produced an all-time high of 4.5 billion tons of coal, up 9 percent from the previous year.

Is Dimon Right?

Although many countries have pledged to wean themselves off of crude oil and natural gas in the coming decades, a growing number of reports from prominent organizations concede that oil will remain a significant form of energy through 2050 worldwide.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published its Annual Energy Outlook in March 2022 (pdf) and predicted that global energy demand would increase by 47 percent. But while the growth in renewables will increase by 2050, oil will still be the top source, as well as natural gas and coal.

“We do see a lot of impact from the growth in renewables and such in reducing carbon intensity,” Chris Namovicz, EIA’s Electricity, Coal, and Renewables Modeling Team lead, said in the outlook. “That being said, demand is still growing, and there are still portions of demand that are most economically satisfied through burning of fossil fuels.”

Gasoline will also remain the primary transportation fuel.

In October 2022, the IEA projected that oil and gas would maintain their energy dominance, even in the group’s net-zero carbon scenario. Last year, oil and gas supplied more than half of the world’s energy needs. By 2050, they'll continue to provide 47 percent of global energy consumption.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) recently forecasted that crude oil, natural gas, and coal will remain critical global energy sources by 2045.

“Long-term non-OECD demand is expected to increase by 24 mb/d [million barrels per day], driven by an expanding middle class, high population growth, and stronger economic growth potential,” OPEC stated in its report. “As a result, global oil demand is projected to increase by 12.9 mb/d, rising to 109.8 mb/d in 2045.”

According to a McKinsey report, even in an “accelerated energy-transition scenario,” the oil and gas sector will need new production levels of 23 million barrels per day to satisfy worldwide demand after 2030.