The energy industry may be enjoying an unprecedented boom due to sustained high oil prices, but commentators at the Investment Dealers Association of Canada’s annual conference on Tuesday, suggested that now’s the time to be investing to ensure supply can meet future strong demand.

At the centre of their message was a consensus that energy demand is not likely to abate any time soon. Rather, demand is only expected to grow along with world population, and in lock step with highly populated, rapidly developing countries such as India and China.

The uncertainty surrounds the supply side. Commentators at the annual conference held in Banff discussed the likelihood that the world’s biggest oilfield, the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, is in decline. A case that is being proposed by Houston-based investment banker, Matthew Simmons, in a new book, “Twilight in the Desert”.

Some of Simmons’ arguments were revealed to the IDA conference by Jim Gray, chairman emeritus Brascan and former CEO Canadian Hunter Energy Corp. He noted that there is strong suspicion that its massive Ghawar field — the world’s biggest known oilfield, which has produced 55 billion barrels in the 50-odd years it has been on stream, and is five times bigger than the next biggest oilfield — is degrading, simply due to its age, and the methods of extraction that are needed to keep it producing.

However, the extent of that deterioration is uncertain because of the lack of transparency in the Saudi oil industry. As, Gray noted, firms such as Royal Dutch Shell Group have been required to restate their reserve estimates downward in the past couple of years. Shell was forced to do this by its status as a public company, by contrast, Saudi’s state oil company, Saudi Aramco, is “a black hole”, when it comes to reserves disclosure, he suggested.

Former U.S. Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, said that whether Simmons is right or wrong about a peak in Saudi oil production, the fact that these issued are being raised posing a question about the world’s ability to meet expected demand increases.

Faced with expected demand pressures, and possible supply constraints, various conference attendees touted possible responses. Gray talked about the potential for Alberta’s oil sands, and called for action to build new transportation infrastructure to help the energy industry in Alberta move its wares around. Gray suggested that the oil sands could be producing 15% to 20% of North American oil by 2030, and that added capacity, could “be our lifeline”.

“In order to give it the opportunity to succeed we need to put in a world class infrastructure system, for people, for exports, for imports, for oversized loads — and let’s be visionary — we are dealing with one of the classic, largest energy opportunities on the globe,” he said.

Greg Melchin, Alberta’s Minister of Energy, called for the industry to shift toward more value-added refining capacity, and away from being a raw resource supplier. “Our resources are world scale,” Melchin said, suggesting Alberta could be an important energy supplier for centuries to come. With that in mind, he stressed its commitment to reducing barriers to capital formation, which will allow for the necessary infrastructure and human resources investment to keep the industry ticking.

And, former secretary Abraham, discussed a variety of possible responses from the perspective to securing US supply and lowering dependence on foreign energy sources, including: passing an energy bill that will open new areas to drilling and lowering other regulations on energy extraction, increasing liquid natural gas imports, returning to nuclear energy, and robustly funding research into alternative energy sources such as hydrogen fuel cells.