Decarbonisation Technology May 2022 Issue

IOGP: New Energy Transition Strategy

initiative commit to avoiding routine flaring in new oil field developments and ending routine flaring at existing oil production by 2030. (World Bank - ZRF, 2015). In February 2022, two industry associations, IPIECA and IOGP, in partnership with GGFR, published “Flaring Management Guidance for the Oil and Gas industry”, a framework to reduce or eliminate flaring (IPIECA, 2022). GGFR publishes global gas flaring estimates regularly and monitors progress towards the zero-flaring goal via The World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Tracker. The top seven gas flaring countries (Russia, Iraq, Iran, USA, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria) produce 40% of the world's oil each year, but in 2020 accounted for 65% of global gas flaring. GGFR partners collectively reduced their flaring intensity (the volume of gas flared per barrel of oil produced) by around 30% between 2004 and 2020. Nevertheless, 142 billion m 3 of gas associated with crude oil production was flared in 2020 (World Bank GGFR, 2022). IOGP (The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers) has launched a new Energy Transition Directorate to deliver its Road to Net Zero strategy. The new directorate will develop guidelines, recommended practices, and standards to ensure cost-effective and timely delivery of low-carbon projects, and rapid scale-up across the global oil and gas industry. IOGP will also promote sharing and optimisation of resources through collaboration and co-ordination between its membership and the industry at large. IOGP’s Energy Transition directorate will implement two programmes:  'Low Carbon Operational Efficiency' focuses on streamlining and integrating the decarbonisation of upstream operations (falling under scope 1 and 2 emissions) to decrease both CO2 and methane intensity of EGPC production assets.

Conclusion Singularly and jointly, leading oil and gas companies are showing that goals to achieve near-zero methane emissions are smart goals. It is time for all oil and gas companies, in all countries, to embed methane emissions avoidance and reduction targets in their corporate strategies, divisional business plans, and operating budgets. These targets should be cascaded through the organisation to be included in annual performance goals for operations and maintenance engineers. Staff recognition and incentive schemes should reflect individual and team achievements in reducing and avoiding methane emissions. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the following who were all interviewed for this article: Concetto Fischetti (IOGP), Jim Herbertson (IPIECA), Julien Perez (OGCI), Roland Kupers and Manfredi Caltagirone (IMEO). Deliverables include: • Flaring and venting: process and technologies to minimise both routine and non-routine emissions • Electrification of oil and gas facilities: lessons learned from electrification projects • Energy efficiency: overview of best available technologies (BAT) • Energy transition metrics and KPIs  'Carbon Capture, Transportation and Storage' focuses on sharing lessons from early CCS pilot projects as well as best practices and operating experiences for large-scale CCS deployment to improve their cost, schedule, and safety. In 2022, IOGP is planning an Opportunity Framing session among its members and technology providers around hydrogen and its value chain.

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