Advances in technology and automation have changed many industries. Now, due to shrinking resources and increasing demand for hydrocarbon products, robotics is making its way into the oil and gas industry. Key industry players are rethinking the pace of their automation timelines as new oil and gas fields are mostly located in extreme conditions that pose serious development challenges in terms of human and environmental safety.
Geologists consider the Red Sea as one of the world’s most promising areas for hydrocarbon exploration. There are nine countries that border the Red Sea: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Israel, Jordan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan. Some of these countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Sudan, started exploration activates in the area years ago.
Innovative technologies are highly valued in the oil and gas industry to meet the growing demand for energy. Scientists have been developing and implementing new techniques to boost the productivity of the industry worldwide. Nanotechnology is considered to be one of the most promising technologies in the industry, as there are already many innovative products that use it.
Egypt’s contribution to Eastern Mediterranean potential gas supplies is not limited to its own reserves and production. The country is expected to be an important transit route for regional gas supplies through the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals, reinforcing the strategic importance of Egypt for the stability of the Eastern Mediterranean energy market. Yet, there are many obstacles along the road to success in being a regional gas hub.
When speaking of natural gas and the Egyptian-Israeli relations, discussions almost always shift to the previous export history and the Israeli hopes of shifting the gear one day and exporting to Egypt its own production.
The countries and territories of the Eastern Mediterranean have been a controversial topic in international natural gas markets. A number of regional export options, especially to the European Union (EU), has been raised, including pipelines to Greece and liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Egypt.
Over the past decade, Israel, Egypt, and Cyprus have all announced discoveries of large offshore deposits of natural gas. These recent discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean have set off a regional race to exploit the newly discovered energy sources and, perhaps just as importantly, the lucrative business of connecting them to the European energy market.
The continued increase in oil consumption has shifted the sector’s attention from peak supply to the need of constraining peak demand. In order to establish new strategies to face this market threat, identifying the drivers and the potential impacts of growing demand is extremely necessary.
Due to production increases, Egypt is set to achieve self-sufficiency in natural gas by the end of 2018. This path has not been easy, as the larger share of the country’s natural gas has been in deepwater fields.
Efforts to reduce gas flaring are slowly gaining support around the world. The practice is coming under criticism due to its waste of valuable resources and negative impact on the environment. Even though reducing flaring is still not a common feature in many petroleum fields, the harmful practice could end worldwide by 2030 if pursued efficiently, as outlined by the World Bank’s “Zero Routine Flaring” initiative.
