Best Practice Keynotes (BPK)

Block 1 - Natural Gas: The Energy That Makes a Difference

Project Management was faced with new challenges in recent years developing and implementing world-class LNG and GTL projects safely, on time, and on schedule:

• Technical challenges related to the ever increasing project complexity, under sometimes harsh climate conditions, or complicated by very sour gas;
• New logistics, infrastructure and social issues, caused by the increased size of LNG and GTL projects today, sometimes managing more than 50.000 workers on site;
• Environmental and geopolitical constraints of new frontier locations;
• Optimum contracting & procurement strategies under extremely volatile market conditions;
• Quality of project professionals, supervisors and craftsmen.

This session will review the way companies are managing these challenges, mitigating the associated risks, and drive for top quartile performance in project delivery.

Major gas infrastructure projects present some of the most demanding and complex financing challenges, even during the best of times. In the wake of the worst global credit crisis on record, and the ensuing market and political uncertainties, this session will bring current perspectives from the industry and the financial community with recent experience in funding such projects – in LNG, in pipelines and in gas storage.

Block 2 - New Exploration and Production Frontiers and Technologies

Notwithstanding the odd reduction owing to specific financial or economic situations, the demand for hydrocarbons has grown steadily in the past and is set to follow the same trend in the future. In parallel to the increase in demand, the production from mature fields is regularly decreasing. The upstream oil industry now faces a major challenge to increase production through the continuous development of new hydrocarbon fields.

The need to satisfy the world’s growing thirst for hydrocarbons means producing from oil and gas fields at ever greater depths (deeply buried reservoirs), or under ever deeper water depths (-ultra- deep offshore). Our industry has begun to tackle developments that require considerable technological boldness to produce:

• either deeply buried reservoirs characterised by High Pressures and High Temperatures (HP/HT) with all the problems generated by these extreme conditions,
• or reservoirs located at great water depths: these fields have to be developed; sometimes satellite reservoirs have to be tied back to a very distant processing unit, while coping with the difficulties of producing more and more viscous oils.
• Through use of representative examples this session will illustrate some of the technical challenges that our industry has experienced, or still has to face, the ground-breaking solutions that have already been found, and the innovations we hope to see in the next few years.

Heavy oil and bitumen are found in many places worldwide, with the largest deposits in the world being in Canada (Alberta), Venezuela and the former Soviet Union. Other countries having such deposits include U.S.A., Russia, Cuba, Indonesia, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Jordan, Madagascar, Colombia, Albania, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Nigeria and Argentina. The main methods for extraction are generally mining and in situ. Within the insitu methods are the following processes:

• Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD)
• Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS)
• The Vapour Extraction Process (VAPEX)
• Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI)
• Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS)

The recovered bitumen may be upgraded at the plant site or diluted and sent through pipelines for production of synthetic crude. Bitumen and Heavy Oil are deficient in hydrogen, compared to typical crude oils. Upgrading is the process that changes bitumen into synthetic crude oil. There are four main steps to the upgrading process: Thermal Conversion, Catalytic Conversion, Distillation and Hydro treating. Different companies use these processes in different ways and at different stages in the transformation of bitumen/ heavy oil into synthetic crude but the basic principles behind this transformation remain the same. The state of the art of the industry worldwide will be described in this Best Practice Keynote.

Block 3 - From the Well to the Consumer: Innovations in Refining, Transportation, Fuel Technology and Petrochemistry

In recent years higher oil prices and energy conservation have forced a squeeze on operational costs whilst at the same time seeking more efficient and continuous running of refining units. This session will discuss in depth safety and measures to keep stable operations both in hard and software by applying lessons from practical experiences and risk assessment.

Long distance transportation of crude oil and refined products by ship and pipeline is expected to grow in the future given the increasing geographic mismatch between demand growth and sources of incremental oil supply. The Middle East, Eurasia and Africa in particular are expected to fuel demand growth in China, India and Europe which will require new pipeline and marine transportation capacity. This Best Practices session will feature successful case studies of new pipeline and shipping solutions that have met the challenges of geopolitics (including piracy), stakeholder support, funding, technology, cost and environmental impact.

Block 4 - Complementary Energy Sources

Hydrogen has been touted as a carbon-free energy source for the so-called hydrogen economy. It has been proposed as a fuel for fuel cell vehicles and as an enabler for carbon capture and sequestration technology for power generation and refineries (large stationary combustion sources). Realization of the hydrogen economy has been delayed due to high costs and performance challenges of fuel cells, on-board hydrogen storage and hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure. Moreover, large volumes of hydrogen are needed to upgrade increasingly heavy and sour hydrocarbon feedstocks to transportation fuels. This session will explore priorities for hydrogen research and development and hydrogen utilization along the energy value chain.

The oil and automotive industries are implementing joint efforts to deliver better quality fuels and more energy efficient and environmentally friendly cars. This session will bring together experts from the energy and automotive industries to present an overview of the latest development in alternative automotive fuels, including electricity, natural gas, hydrogen and biofuels. The session will address the past achievements and future perspectives in fuel quality, energy efficiency and cost reduction and how the increasing demand for automotive fuels will be met in the foreseeable future.

Block 5 - Sustainability Commitment: Environment, Social, Economy, Education, Governance

Ethical behaviour and good governance are key factors contributing towards the industry’s sustainability. Lessons learned and best practices from corporate responsibility and community development projects and experiences with initiatives like Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Global Compact, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and others, will be presented in this session.

Carbon Capture and Storage/Sequestration (CCS) is seen as a potential major contributor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production and from the power generation industry. Several R&D programs and demonstration projects over the last decades have moved understanding and acceptance of CCS forward. This session will address examples of the latest developments from the entire CCS value chain – capture, transportation and storage/sequestration/utilisation.

People are not alike, everyone is different. Diversity therefore consists of visible and non-visible factors, which include personal characteristics such as background, culture, personality and work-style in addition to the characteristics that are protected under discrimination legislation in terms of race, disability, gender, religion and belief, sexual orientation and age. Harnessing these differences can create a productive environment in which everybody feels valued, their talents are fully utilised and organisational goals are met. This session will highlight best practice in this area from the oil and gas industry and show how organisations successfully embrace diversity to measurable benefit.