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Oil-Supply Anxiety Overblown, BP Chief Says

British Petroleum CEO Lord John Browne
Christine Arrasmith, NPR
British Petroleum CEO Lord John Browne

With plenty of inventory and production capacity, concern over the stability of the world's oil supply is overblown, the chief executive of British Petroleum says.

"The world is very well-provided with both inventories of oil and gas, growth in oil and gas, and increasing surplus production capacity," Lord John Browne said Thursday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In an interview with NPR, Browne said that even with energy prices currently rising to new highs, worries about political risks are often overplayed.

"I do worry that people worry too much and that we could potentially be overdoing the anxiety," he said. "The fact is we haven't had an interruption of energy supply for a very, very long time."

"Right now, I think people have a high level of anxiety... not on the basis of what's happened, but what might happen."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.