Oil and gas supplies will struggle to keep up with world demand growth, making energy prices more expensive and more volatile in the long term, the head of Europe’s largest oil company has warned.

Peter Voser, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, told the Financial Times: “We will have a lot of volatility ahead of us that we cannot avoid … for energy prices in general.”

He added: “We most probably will see a tightening of the supply-demand balance and hence rising energy prices for the long term. I think we should just get used to that.”

His comments add to the pressure on US policymakers both to develop America’s own oil and gas resources and to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels.

Shell this week secured air quality permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency that it required to drill in the Arctic Chukchi Sea next summer, although it still needs to surmount further regulatory hurdles before it can proceed.

Mr Voser said he believed that the US administration and Congress now had a greater understanding of the benefits of allowing Arctic drilling, compared with last year when Shell was turned down for those permits after an appeal, and forced to put on hold its plans to drill in the summer of 2011.

Exploiting US resources would strengthen energy security, create jobs and generate more tax revenues, he said.

However, he added that there was still an immense challenge in meeting growing world demand for energy.