Enhancing its active role in the petroleum sector, the Egypt Oil & Gas (EOG) Committee has held a valuable workshop on decarbonization under the high patronage of the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla on Tuesday, May 30th at Enppi company’s headquarters.
The workshop started with a remarkable speech made by Alaa Hagar, Undersecretary of the Minister’s Technical Office at the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and David Chi, EOG Committee Chairman as well as Vice President and Country Manager of Apache.
Hagar started his speech by thanking the EOG Committee for organizing this event, noting the crucial role of the committee within the oil and gas industry. “The Egypt Oil & Gas Committee continues to provide an effective platform for dialogue and cooperation between the sector’s companies and the international energy companies with the aim of continuously improving the sector’s performance,” Hagar said.
Hagar highlighted the importance of decarbonization to the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. “Decarbonization and energy transition are integrated as the core aspects within the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources’ strategic pillars. In addition, since the oil and gas companies are usually perceived to be part of the climate change challenge, the minister envisioned that they should be engaged to be part of its solution.”
For his part, Chi praised the role of the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in COP27 in ensuring that the oil and gas sector becomes a major contributor to decarbonization. “His Excellency Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla was the first one to push for the oil and gas sector to actually have a seat at the table in COP discussions,” Chi explained. “I think we should all be very proud of working in the Egyptian oil and gas sector. I think we are one of the [few] oil and gas sectors around the world that is really working closely together.”
The workshop involved a series of informative technical sessions providing the attendees with the latest approaches and technologies being followed up to decarbonize the vital sector. The first session was introduced by Concetto Fischetti, Transition Director at the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers IOGP titled “Priorities for Energy Transitions.” His presentation touched on the energy trilemma and the energy sector’s roadmap and efforts to realize net zero goals supported by his company.
Kevin Spencer, Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) Manager at IOGP, provided the second session. It involved two presentations titled “CCS-Hubs, Concepts & Business Models” and “CCS-Measurement, Monitoring and Verification Recommended Practice.” These presentations offered an in-depth look at the time importance of CCS, its challenges, as well as the latest methods for measuring and monitoring CCS. These presentations also touched on the verification plan for the geological storage of CO2.
With flare gas recovery being a widely used method for reducing emissions, “Flare & Venting – Flare Gas Recovery System” was presented virtually by Alexandre Fernandes Mark de Kuijer from Petrobras/Shell provided industry professionals with the latest guidelines for the design and operation of flare gas recovery systems for decarbonization.
Shifting the workshop’s focus to electrification, Shell UK’s Lead in Grid Connection Technology Paul Donnellan delivered an additional presentation titled “Recommended Practice for Electrification of Oil and Gas Facilities” during which he outlined that standardization and collaboration as vital ways to make progress in a lower carbon agenda He also offered a detailed explanation of recommended practices for electrification and technology development.
With methane becoming a concern around the world for emission reduction efforts, David Newman, bp Senior Advisor, Measurement, Analyzer Systems, outlined methods and technologies used to measure, monitor, and thereby limit methane emissions in his presentation titled “Methane Emissions Detection & Quantification Technologies”.
Methane emissions were also a subject that took center stage in the presentation by Pietro Mezzano and Lauren Ward from OGCI titled “OCGI Satellite Monitoring Campaign”, highlighting OCGI’s efforts to monitor and actively reduce methane emissions.
A key highlight of the event was the various energy transition initiatives and success stories that were presented at the workshop. These presentations were delivered by Jorge Luis Becerra Barbella, Plant Operations, Asset Integrity and Energy Efficiency Manager at Eni; Mohamed Salaheldin, Quality General Manager Sidpec; Mohamed Tash, Energy Efficiency Manager at Gasco; Mahmoud Shabana, Exploration Data Project Manager at SLB; and Khaled Tawfik, Process Engineer at Cairo Oil Refining Company.
The day was concluded with an interactive breakout session where attendees, mostly industry professionals from Egypt’s oil and gas sector, were divided into three groups to generate ideas, solutions, and discuss challenges related to decarbonization and energy transition initiatives. The three teams included upstream, downstream, and non-technical enablers and the session was moderated by Nihal Abdel Karim, EOG Committee-Energy Transition Taskforce Leader and Development Engineering Manager at Eni/IEOC.
In the end, the three teams concluded the sessions by giving a presentation, each touching on a variety of different topics including financing investments, regulations, policies, capacity building, know-how and others. The ideas from all three teams will be taken and may be considered for future decarbonization projects.
