Reducing the environmental footprint

We must harness the same strengths we apply to recover more oil and gas – innovative technologies and partnerships – to increase efficiency and reduce emissions and waste in our upstream operations.The key opportunities in the Middle East are to:

• deploy CO2 capture and storage technology across the region,
• reduce flaring of associated gas,
• reduce discharge of waste heat and water,
• and develop solutions for the coming stockpile of sulphur.

Abu Dhabi plays a leading role in formulating a regional response to the CO2 challenge as outlined in HH Sheikh Khalifa’s vision. Your national initiative, under the umbrella of Masdar, with other government entities and partners, aims to reduce the UAE’s CO2 emissions by almost 40% and increase oil recovery by an additional 10% through CO2 injection.

Another way to reduce emissions is to put out gas flares. The World Bank reports that the Middle East still flares 30 billion cubic metres each year – that’s enough to feed a 20 million ton liquefied natural gas plant. Iraq accounts for nearly a quarter of that.

Shell recently agreed with the Iraqi government to create a joint venture with Iraq’s South Gas Company to collect and process the currently flared associated gas for domestic use and, in future, for exports of liquefied natural gas. This way, Iraq would create a new, reliable supply of domestic energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and generate economic value. In Iraq we will make use of the experience in gas gathering and processing gained in Abu Dhabi in the past 30 years, through our excellent cooperation with GASCO.

Another innovation that should become a standard practice in our industry is to capture exhaust heat from local power stations and make much better use of it, for instance, to produce steam for EOR purposes. At Qarn Alam, PDO is planning to use this method to generate over 80% of the required steam. Similar plans exist for other fields.

Once all these energy efficiency plans are implemented, PDO’s total gas savings through cogeneration will be half a trillion cubic feet over 20 years, well enough to fuel the roughly 600 MW power requirement of Muscat.

Another issue that is rising up the international agenda is fresh water scarcity. The energy industry consumes, produces and discharges huge amounts of water – and we need to focus much more on the impact this has. Take the massive Pearl Gas-to-Liquids project in Qatar. In a largely arid region like Qatar, the use of large quantities of fresh ground water is impossible while desalination of seawater is energy intensive. But like any large project, Pearl GTL still needs a lot of water, in this case almost 200,000 barrels of water each day for cooling and process usage.

The good news is that the GTL plant - by virtue of the fundamental chemistry of the reaction on which it is based - also produces a lot of water, in the case of Pearl GTL over 210,000 barrels, more than it consumes. All of the water will be re-used. So the project will not deplete or impact local water resources. Pearl GTL’s water management solutions place it in a different class of sophistication from the norms of our industry. And we continue our research into next generation water management solutions.

Finally, we need to do something about the world’s growing sulphur stockpiles, which total about 21 million tonnes – enough to fill a cargo train stretching from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam. As we increasingly come to rely on hydrocarbons with a high hydrogen sulphide content, that train is rapidly getting longer.

To help tackle this problem, Shell researchers have developed new sulphur-based products for use in fertilisers, road asphalt, and concrete. We are completing successful tests on all of them. The fertilisers enable higher crop yields, sulphur-asphalt can carry heavier loads and be produced in a less CO2-intensive way than conventional asphalts, while the sulphur-based concrete is more flexible than concrete based on Portland cement, and resistant to salt water and acid. We see good business in these new products – especially as the expected global sulphur surplus ramps up post 2010.

Conclusion

There is plenty of evidence that our industry is capable of embracing change. But let’s not underestimate the challenge posed by the three hard truths. Getting more production from mature conventional fields and difficult unconventional fields, will both put upward pressure on the energy-intensity of operations.

So the future of the upstream industry depends on our efforts to both increase efficiency and reduce our environmental footprint. Recovering more and wasting less are two sides of the same coin. We will need new technologies, skilled people, lean processes and huge financial resources. As we plot our course into the future, we can take heart from the example set by Abu Dhabi, with its strong focus on mobilising human talent and international partnership. In Shell, we’re proud to play our small part in supporting Abu Dhabi’s continuing transformation and progress.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1176