Round Tables

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

With natural gas meeting an ever greater share of primary energy demand in many countries, ensuring reliability and security of supplies continues to rise up the political agenda in importing nations. Those countries committing huge sums to develop gas for export are understandably looking for reassurance on their long-term access to markets. Transit countries need a fair return for maintaining the infrastructure and operations on behalf of both exporters and consumers. Recent experiences around the world indicate that balancing these varying stakeholder needs in the context of existing and planned gas pipelines is getting harder, rather than easier, to achieve. This discussion will explore the views of a variety of such stakeholders.

For the last 50 years gas pricing in many markets has been indexed, primarily to crude oil. But with the enormous volatility in crude oil prices in recent years, coupled with the fact that much natural gas is competing now mainly with energy sources other than oil, especially in power generation and heating, do producers and consumers have continued confidence in this pricing model? This discussion will compare the merits of existing pricing arrangements with alternatives and assess whether and when some of these might begin to take centre stage in commercial negotiations.

Demand for natural gas is surging ahead at unprecedented rates, mainly from the power, industrial, petrochemicals, city gas, and transportation sectors. Rising demand and the inability to satisfy this demand has had a major impact on the regional and global economy. This session will evaluate the growing application of natural gas in these sectors, meeting the challenge of demand/ supply imbalance and the strategies for adding value throughout the chain.

Block 2 New Exploration and Production Frontiers and Technologies

Global hydrocarbon production from existing oil and gas provinces will start declining due to the depletion of current producing reservoirs and the decreasing number and size of new fields being brought on-stream from the traditional plays. While peak production will take place in the future, the reality is that experts differ widely on how early, or late, this will take place and what the peak production volume will likely be. The discovery of new hydrocarbon basins and accumulations in the territories already well studied as well as in new frontiers until recently not economically feasible, and new Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technologies, keep postponing this peak/decline scenario further into the future. Still, a hydrocarbon production will inevitably reach its peak as these are not renewable energy sources. How far the industry can postpone this scenario and how to cope with the energy demand when this will happen will be the subject of this round table.

Recently substantial changes have taken place in the regulations of reporting reserves and resources. Regulatory bodies with national (Mining Bureaus, Petroleum Directorates, Agencies, Ministries) and supranational (SEC) scopes, professional organizations of the industry (American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers, World Petroleum Council, International Accountants Standard Board) and global organizations (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) equally contributed to update the earlier classification codes to reflect advances in technology and to restore the credibility in reserves reporting. In this session representatives of high profile authorities and regulatory bodies and stakeholders are going to discuss the impact of the new regulations and future steps to be taken.

The International Energy Agency in its 2008 World Energy Outlook - Reference Scenario projects that more than US$11 trillion will need to be invested in worldwide oil and gas infrastructure over the 2007 to 2030 period to offset production declines and to meet growing demand. How this investment will be funded and executed is a major challenge for the industry given volatile product prices, difficult credit and equity markets, long lead times and project life and the increasingly evolving relative roles of IOCs and NOCs in many of the most prospective hydrocarbon areas of the world. This Round Table discussion will bring together representatives of IOC's, NOC's, financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds and governments to address the challenges of funding energy investment in a changing world.

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

Beside feedstock costs, one of the main additional cost components of modern refinery products is energy consumption during the production process which is necessarily linked to emissions. In addition, the reduction of SOx and CO2 emissions from mobile sources by providing high-quality fuels is at the same time linked to an increasing CO2 volume in refineries. Moreover, the impact of the manufacture and combustion of biofuels on the total amount of emissions is still under debate. The complex interplay of these factors and ways for their optimum balance will be the key topic of this discussion session.

Longer term demand for oil products is expected to continue its rising trend. Also the trends for changes in the refinery products slate, more diesel and cleaner products, is expected to continue. Finally, geographical demand trends will impact the need for changes in the refining industry. All these changes have been or will be accomplished by capital projects, including debottlenecking projects, new units to produce cleaner fuel components, refinery expansions or grassroots refineries. Backed up by scientific and operational experience, project management has become increasingly effective over time to reduce project cycles, increase cost efficiency and improve safety performance. This session will focus on the experience from refinery projects, helping to move the industry forward well into the 21st century.

Block 4 Complementary Energy Sources

Even though fossil fuels will comprise the largest part of the world’s energy matrix for the foreseeable future other sources of energy are gaining rapid market share and attracting very significant investments around the world. Non fossil fuels, including biofuels, wind, solar, biomass, tidal, wave and geothermal sources of energy, can play a significant role in providing security of supply to major consuming countries and economic and social benefits to producing nations. However, the production cost of such complementary sources of energy may render them marginally attractive or uneconomic, particularly during the low price periods of a volatile energy market price. Furthermore, the large scale production of non fossil fuels may have significant impacts on the environment, CO2 emissions and in certain cases requires the utilization of vast agricultural land farms and water resources. In this Round Table the debaters will discuss the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of non fossil fuels and how these may contribute to sustainable supply of energy for the future generations.

Fossil fuels are the world’s vital source of energy and will remain so for many years to come which means facing a series of challenges, environmentally, economically and socially. To meet these challenges and ensure the sustainability of our energy supply to meet growing energy demand is a problem that must be addressed. At present, in the world’s primary energy complementary energy sources such as nuclear and hydro accounts only for about 6% and 2% respectively; biomass and waste account for 10%; other renewable energy is less than 1%. There are quite a number of world energy structure predictions for 2030, but what will be the energy mix for 2050 and beyond? Different scenarios will be explored.

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

The need to look for oil and gas reserves in increasingly more difficult frontiers led the industry to operate in regions plagued by civil wars, terrorism and social inequality. Some segments of society argue that, by investing in such regions, the oil industry is condoning governments and rulers that abuse human rights in various ways. Others claim that, on the other hand, that socially responsible companies may actually be a deterrent to human rights abuses and help mitigate the suffering of the population. This Round Table will discuss both points of view and address if and how companies should operate in such regions and how to implement the principles of Human Rights throughout their operations.

The petroleum business is interconnected, globalized and interdependent. Geopolitical issues can impact access to exploration in areas of territorial disputes or poor boundary demarcation zones (such as the Arctic, Spratleys, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Thailand), and can impact oil or gas supply and prices through disruption of transportation corridors, such as gas flow to Europe, Trans-Andean pipelines, Trans-Caucasus pipelines, piracy on high seas. Terrorism, military conflicts, resource nationalisation, global economy, disruption of funding and an unclear international legal framework are also major disruptors to the global energy flow. These geopolitical factors will be discussed from the prospective of business, government and academia.

The National Petroleum Council in the US has estimated that more than 60% of the world's proven conventional oil reserves are held by NOC's and more than half of the world's top oil and gas producers are NOC's or newly privatized NOC's. This represents a dramatic evolution in the relationships between IOC's and NOC's. And potential concerns between national goals and shareholder goals. The International Energy Agency in its 2008 World Energy Outlook projects that NOC's will account for more than 80% of required incremental oil and gas supply between 2007 and 2030.This Round Table discussion will explore the future roles and interactions of NOC's and IOC's and impacts on world oil and gas supply.

Climate change is one of the most urgent and difficult issues facing civilisation. It is a global problem that directly affects every single citizen of every single nation. This creates an entanglement of interests unprecedented in history. If the problem of climate change is truly global, so too is the path to its solution. Solving this problem requires aligning the energy policies of over 150 nations. Any problem on this scale is bound to transcend traditional policy boundaries. In particular, climate change blurs, perhaps eliminates the distinction between foreign and domestic policy. Energy, transport, housing, agriculture, and many other policy disciplines must now be treated as an integral part of foreign policy. The consequences of climate change will have such a profound effect on international affairs that they will come to shape the context within which diplomacy takes place.