Blockchain could revolutionize the oil and gas industry, but there are several open research challenges hindering its successful implementation.Ěý

Legacy systems, approaches, and technologies leveraged for managing oil and gas supply-chain operations fall short of providing operational transparency, traceability, audit, security, and trusted–data-provenance features. They also tend to be centralized, manual, and not integrated, which make them vulnerable to manipulation and the single-point-of-failure problem.

A Khalifa University team researched the issue and found reason to be excited for blockchain technology’s potential in the industry. But there are challenges ahead despite the fact that the industry has already begun adopting blockchain solutions.

Dr. Raja Ahmad, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Prof. Khaled Salah, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Dr. Raja Jayaraman, Associate Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Dr. Ibrar Yaqoob, Research Scientist, and Dr. Mohammed Omar, Chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, have investigated the use of blockchain in the oil and gas industry, analyzing the applications, challenges and future trends of this technology in one of the world’s most important industries. Their research was published in.

Industry players believe digital technologies could boost their productivity by 10 to 15 percent. Trading of oil and gas products, such as gasoline and diesel, is a highly standardized and quality-sensitive process that requires high security, privacy and fast data processing, but the majority of systems that currently exist to monitor and manage this trade are centralized, unreliable and non-transparent.

Blockchain, however, is a secure, distributed ledger of transactions that uses cryptographic hash algorithms, which the researchers believe can make oil and gas operations more efficient, transparent, and trustworthy.

A Shell, BP, and Statoil research study estimates that adopting blockchain could reduce the oil and gas industry’s transaction-execution time by 30 percent, Dr. Yaqoob said.

Blockchain offers an immutable and tamper-proof ledger, where each record created forms a block, and each block is confirmed by the community among which the platform is shared before it can be paired up with the previous entry in the chain. The blockchain is a shared database, validated by a wider community rather than a central authority, making it a public ledger that cannot be easily tampered with, as no one person can go back and change things.

Many blockchain solutions use programmable smart contracts – simple programs that can be used to automatically exchange information under predetermined conditions.

Dr. Yaqoob said. “More specifically, blockchain assists in securing and simplifying oil and gas trading, shipment tracking, inventory control, documentation, and billing and payments. It simplifies the unwieldy and complex supply chain processes by introducing transparency to the involved business processes.”

The researchers say blockchain technology uses resource-efficient consensus algorithms and irreversible hashing-based data encryption methods to secure the data and transactions relating to this industry. However, the successful adoption of blockchain technology into the oil and gas industry is affected by many factors, including immature and globally differing blockchain standards, which need to be standardized across the world for such an international industry. Additionally, blockchain technology has a high implementation cost, and legal and regulatory frameworks for blockchain need to be built.

Additionally, the computing processes behind blockchain require a large amount of energy and computing resources to unlock the mathematical challenges of building each block. The energy demands result in increased carbon-dioxide emissions, so finding a more energy-efficient mining process is a crucial research challenge.

Dr. Yaqoob said. “While there are many open challenges still hindering its implementation, we present these as future research directions, and believe there are several systems using blockchain-based smart contracts that can greatly improve critical services in the oil and gas industry.”

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
22 June 2022

The post Blockchain in the Oil and Gas Industry has Promise but Faces Challenges appeared first on Khalifa University.

While the oil refining industry has brought manifold benefits, it is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and must now decarbonize its operations if the world is to ever achieve net-zero carbon emissions.Ěý

As the world moves away from fossil fuels, all industries and sectors will need to decarbonize if targets for a future with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions are to be reached. This includes the petroleum refining industry, an industry that accounts for up to eight percent of global industrial energy consumption.

Even though populations are turning to more sustainable energy sources, demand for products derived from fossil fuels will not end overnight, particularly demand for plastic products. Hence, improving emissions from oil refineries is necessary to reduce their environmental impact as we transition to a lower-carbon future. The US petroleum refining industry, for instance, produces 198 megatonnes of carbon dioxide each year— the same amount emitted by nearly 36 million homes.

Khalifa University’s Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President, Research and Development and Professor of Practice, collaborated with an international team of researchers to provide a systematic and critical literature review to uncover the means by which the oil refining industry can decarbonize and evolve as part of an increasingly carbon constrained future.

Team members were Dr. Benjamin Sovacool, University of Sussex, UK; Dr. Jinsoo Kim, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea; Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines, USA; and Joao Uratani, a research engineer also from Khalifa University. Their review, which was recently published in, is a part of a work program undertaken by the UK’s Industrial Decarbonisation Research & Innovation Centre (IDRIC). The team has already published work on decarbonization of the iron and steel, food and beverage, glass and ceramics industries as well as work on the roles of fluorinated gases (or F-gases) and hydrogen in industrial decarbonization. This work on decarbonization of the oil refining industry is closely tied to the work on hydrogen given that oil refining is currently the second largest consumer of hydrogen globally.

In this paper, the research team used a sociotechnical perspective to understand the oil refining industry and highlight key opportunities for decarbonization. These insights support policy makers, researchers, and practitioners, offering the tools needed to advance a low-carbon transition of the oil refining industry.

What is oil refining?

Crude oil is the term for unprocessed oil; petroleum in its original form after extraction from the ground. It’s the starting point for hydrocarbon products, including the gasoline for your car, kerosene, synthetic fibers, plastics, tires and even crayons. To produce these products, the crude oil must first be processed or refined.

The petroleum that comes straight out of the ground contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. These molecules contain hydrogen and carbon atoms, and come in various lengths and structures, from straight chains to branching chains, to rings. Each different chain length and structure has a different property that makes it useful in different ways.

Oil refining separates these hydrocarbons by heating the oil and separating the hydrocarbons according to the temperatures at which they vaporize. Chemical refinery processes also include operations such as cracking, which uses heat, pressure and sometime catalysts to produce a broad range of valuable refinery products from the crude oil feedstock.

“The oil refining industry has become a foundation of modern society,” Dr. Griffiths said. “It was established in the mid-19th century to refine crude oil into transportation fuels, petrochemical feedstocks, and a variety of other products that have brought manifold benefits, but it has also led to the global proliferation of greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution. The industry faces a growing need to decarbonize its operations and to support decarbonization of the end use sectors that it directly enables.”

Energy-Intensive Refining

Oil refinery plants can vary in design and complexity but together, crude oil refining is estimated to account for about six to eight percent of all global industrial energy consumption, with this energy consumption representing up to 50 percent of the refinery’s total operating costs. All key processes within the oil refining industry are considered energy-intensive due to extensive direct heat and steam use—the boiling point for the different hydrocarbon products ranges from 40 degrees Celsius for petroleum gases used for heating, cooking and plastics, to over 600 degrees Celsius for the oils needed for asphalt and tar.

Known as ‘process heating’, this is a refinery’s main carbon emitting activity. In the US, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel account for 63 percent, 25 percent, and six percent respectively of total oil refining emissions.

Refineries that process heavier crude oils have lower energy efficiencies and higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to refineries that process lighter crudes because of the processing required to crack and treat the heavier crude oils.

“According to the IEA, an estimated 95kg of carbon dioxide is emitted in bringing an average barrel of oil to end-use consumers,” Dr. Griffiths said. “Different oil refining plants that process different oil feedstocks exhibit different emission intensities however. At the lower end, a refinery might have an average emissions intensity of less than 45kg CO2 per barrel, while at the higher end it could be in excess of 200kg per barrel.”

However, the most energy-intensive heating represents a relatively smaller fraction of overall refinery energy demand it is required for the processing of just a portion of crude volumes. Additionally, not every refinery around the world produces all petroleum products; refineries with different feedstocks will produce different hydrocarbon byproducts, and some of these byproducts can be used as energy sources for the refinery itself.

“An oil refining plant is typically capable of generating most of the energy it requires in situ via byproduct refinery gases,” Dr. Griffiths said. ‘For example, 61 percent of the energy used in the Dutch refining industry is provided by refinery fuel gases, with the other major contributor being natural gas. In the US, oil refining byproducts meet 55 percent of the energy refinery energy requirements.”

Reducing Refining’s Carbon Footprint Calls for Technology and Policy Interventions

Lessening the industry’s environmental footprint will be a challenge, especially since refineries have long lifetimes and there are few incentives to deploy new technologies that may disrupt operations or are costly to implement.

The research team organized the major approaches for decarbonization into six categories: improved energy efficiency; waste heat recovery; improved design performance; increased use of renewable energy sources; adoption of carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies; and the adoption of low-carbon hydrogen. They further consider how refineries of the future may need to be structured to cater to a changing product slate of low-carbon fuels and chemical feedstocks.

“The age of the refinery plant impacts the number of feasible low-carbon interventions, and therefore the extent of the reduction in emissions,” Dr. Griffiths said. “Geography, crude grade, and refinery type also influence the decarbonization potential.”

The most carbon-intensive refineries are those classed as ‘middle-aged’, between 40 and 64 years old, although the younger ones (less than nine years old) are also rather carbon intensive. The research team consider the younger refineries most problematic for carbon emissions though because “they will likely be operational for many decades to come unless shut down prematurely.”

“The capacity of the oil refining industry to pursue decarbonization interventions beyond those that are purely profit-driven may be limited to the financial bandwidth that companies have to explore such technologies,” Dr. Griffiths said. “In the absence of policy drivers, management resistance to decarbonization is to be expected.”

Barriers to decarbonization often require policy interventions that can be regulatory, fiscal or financial. The research team identified multiple policy mechanisms that could be implemented to decarbonize oil refining, including adopting carbon pricing mechanisms, emissions intensity targets, and financial incentives for research and development of novel decarbonization technologies.

“The complex nature of the oil refining industry means that no ‘one-solution-fits-all’ approach is possible for decarbonization,” Dr. Griffiths said. “The barriers to decarbonization are technical, economic, organizational, political, and social. But despite these challenges, low-carbon interventions throughout the oil refining sociotechnical system, coupled with institutional and market drivers, can drive forward innovations that will lead to many benefits as refineries evolve to meet increasing demand for low-carbon fuels and feedstocks.”

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
24 March 2022

The post The Opportunities and Barriers in Decarbonizing the Oil Refining Industry appeared first on Khalifa University.

Hydrogen offers a potential solution to the problem of supporting more sustainable industries, but technical, economic, social, and political factors stand in its way, according to a new paper produced by an international team of experts from a variety of disciplines.Ěý

Using decarbonized hydrogen, so-called green hydrogen, is an avenue to a low-carbon economy that is attracting renewed interest. Technological developments and cost reductions could allow hydrogen to contribute significantly to a decarbonized economy as a fuel and a feedstock. As a fuel, hydrogen offers considerable potential because it generates no carbon dioxide on combustion. As a feedstock, low-carbon hydrogen could replace high-carbon feedstocks in processes such as steel production.

At a critical juncture for the industry and global climate, Dr. Steve Griffiths, SVP Research and Development and Professor of Practice, offers a critical, systematic and interdisciplinary assessment of industrial decarbonization via hydrogen. Dr. Griffiths and his team reviewed more than 2,100 sources of evidence, referencing over 700 papers and studies, using a sociotechnical lens to examine hydrogen production and use across multiple industries. The work on hydrogen is part of a broader set of studies that the team has undertaken with support from the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) in the United Kingdom.

Team members were Dr. Benjamin Sovacool, University of Sussex, UK; Dr. Jinsoo Kim, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea; Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines, USA; and Joao Uratani, a research engineer also from Khalifa University.

Their review was published in.

“Hydrogen is increasingly being positioned as a key energy vector due to its versatility as a chemical store of energy for use in the power, buildings, transport, and industrial sectors,” Dr. Griffiths said. “More importantly, hydrogen is one of the key options for many decarbonizing industrial sectors, particularly those that require hydrogen as a feedstock for process chemistry.”

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe but hydrogen atoms do not exist in nature by themselves. To produce hydrogen, its atoms need to be decoupled from other elements in resources likeĚý water, plants or fossil fuels. The method by which hydrogen is produced largely determines its sustainability.

“,” Dr. Griffiths said. “Its properties make it an excellent fuel but hydrogen requires considerable care in processing and handling. Further, transporting it long distances in a liquid form is currently very expensive.”

Although the use of hydrogen is somewhat limited in scope today, a very different future may be on the horizon. The industrial processes used to make steel, cement, ceramics, glass and chemicals all require varying amounts of high-temperature heat. For these sectors, hydrogen is one of the very few long-term options for replacing fossil fuels at large scale.

The use of hydrogen in shipping, particularly in the form of ammonia, is the major opportunity here.

However, the main challenge with scaling up the hydrogen-supply chain is to lower the costs of transporting it. The existing technologies for transporting and distributing hydrogen long distances in a volumetrically energy dense liquid form are still significantly more expensive than those of other fuels, such as oil and natural gas. Hydrogen, or one of its derivatives, particularly ammonia, may play a prominent role in such long distance transport. However, pipeline transmission of hydrogen gas is currently the economic means of moving hydrogen at large scale.

Compressed hydrogen could use converted natural-gas pipelines, or newly built ones, or even be co-transported with natural gas to partially decarbonize natural gas already used in the energy sector. A lack of dedicated global hydrogen pipeline networks is, however, a current challenge to be overcome if regional and national hydrogen trade is to be established. Once transported, hydrogen storage becomes the priority, but hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density can make it difficult to store. Fortunately, there appears to be no insurmountable technical barrier to storing hydrogen over the longer term in high capacity geologic formations like aquifers and rock caverns.

The final cost of hydrogen in international trade will depend on what it costs to produce and transport it, Dr. Griffiths said. “Connecting suppliers and consumers at the global level via the most cost-effective means will be a great challenge.”

Such considerations are particularly relevant for connecting global supply and demand. This said, sociopolitical factors could hinder hydrogen’s growing role in industrial decarbonization and so must also be considered.

The review paper considers the social and technical systems involved in making, distributing, and using hydrogen, with the authors accounting for institutional inputs, policy and regulatory frameworks, and financial and economic enablers. There are many socio-technical elements at play:

“Industry decarbonization via hydrogen will require policy mechanisms that stimulate both hydrogen supply and demand and support development of the necessary supply-chain infrastructure,” Dr. Griffiths said. “While policy toolkits can be built upon existing efforts targeting renewable-energy generation and use, specific hydrogen-targeted policy instruments will be needed.”

Further, policies can spur innovation, and dedicated funds will be required to support research and development in academia and industry.

In this context, dedicated hydrogen-research centers are appearing, and public-private partnerships for the demonstration and scale up of hydrogen technologies and projects can be found around the world. Regulatory and certification frameworks are emerging that cover the production, supply-chain and industrial-use elements of hydrogen at the national level. Internationally, seventeen standards had been published and fifteen more were under development at the time the paper was written. These standards cover most elements of the technical pathways for hydrogen production and use.

However, the degree to which countries have been able to implement regulation varies. National and regional regulatory bodies will need to adopt harmonized policy instruments to avoid being excluded from accessing international hydrogen markets. Additionally, the regulatory frameworks on safety and quality control will need to be particularly robust.

“The absence of comprehensive, national and international policy and regulatory frameworks for hydrogen adoption, particularly forĚý industrial systems, is a major challenge,” Dr. Griffiths said. “Despite increasing interest in hydrogen, policy support in the form of roadmaps, action and strategic plans is still not fully implemented on a global level.”

The future of hydrogen trade relationships will also rely heavily on geopolitics. The role that renewable hydrogen could play on the energy geopolitics stage remains to be seen. Particularly as transport costs are reduced, the importance of where resources are found will be reduced. Contrasting this to the geopolitical clout afforded to countries located on top of robust oil reserves suggests how global geopolitical dynamics could be affected.

“Whether countries will adopt particular roles in a hydrogen-economy transition is likely to depend on existing resources and infrastructure,” Dr. Griffiths said. “Some countries are more likely than others to lead the global markets in production capacity and export heavily, while others will focus on importation to meet demand. Countries that are more likely to import are already net energy importers under the current fossil-energy paradigm.” Industrial adoption of low-carbon hydrogen still faces a significant number of barriers. Regulatory and standardization instruments are perhaps the key means of driving rapid hydrogen utilization, according to the study authors, but support for R&D is also critical.

“Decarbonizing hydrogen is key to decarbonizing the chemical and refining industries, but it will also help decarbonize a number of other industries,” Dr. Griffiths said.

Applying decarbonized hydrogen across a wide range of sectors could benefit a large number of companies and economies. Of these, perhaps the most significant are the oil and gas firms that are increasingly facing calls to halt fossil-fuel production. As these companies look to diversify their portfolios, green hydrogen or hydrogen produced from fossil sources coupled with carbon capture, could be critical. Cutting the costs to achieve global industrial adoption of low-carbon hydrogen will require massive investment and scale, which oil majors could provide.

The authors noted that moving forward, the most ambitious targets for hydrogen use will require additional study, ranging from R&D to market stimulation, with further consideration of potential geopolitical ramifications and also further consideration of opportunities and challenges for hydrogen adoption in developing countries.

Most articles about hydrogen involve engineering and the natural sciences with social sciences representing a small fraction of total papers published. This suggests there is a lot of room to study in more detail the sociotechnical aspects of hydrogen use.

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
29 September 2021

The post Industrial Decarbonization via Hydrogen appeared first on Khalifa University.

As the world’s leading energy organization reports the radical steps needed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, SVP Research and Development Dr. Steve Griffiths discusses the prospects for the oil-producing GCC countries in a webinar hosted by The Middle East Institute.

By Dr. Steve Griffiths

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a on a pathway to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Among the many proposals in the report is the call to immediately end new investments in oil and gas exploration and development. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies still depend heavily on oil and gas for their national income, despite economic diversification initiatives over the last several years. How credible is the IEA pathway to Net Zero by 2050 and how will this affect the oil-producing countries in the GCC?

In the 1800s, we went through a period where we were a society based on biomass, then the industrial revolution followed and we switched to coal for a new form of energy. Finally, in the last few decades, coal, oil and gas have become the dominant sources of energy with the proliferation of hydrocarbons, but of course, renewable energy sources have appeared as well. We are seeing sustainability coming into play and as it does, we have to ask the question: what’s going to happen over the next 80 years as we see the end of the ‘oil age’, particularly as we work on limiting the emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels?

The current thinking is it would be much better for the planet to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, because when you get to 2 degrees, the climate issues we’re seeing now will simply be exacerbated. The 2050 dialogue is now on the table, and this creates a discussion about how quickly we can move towards mitigating or eliminating our emissions.

The sustainable development scenario is essentially a net zero solution, but with a postponed deadline: global CO2 emissions from the energy sector and industrial processes would need to fall by more than 70 percent by 2050 to be on track for net-zero by 2070. This would limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.

A shorter timescale, and the one recommended by the recent IEA report,, would see global CO2 emissions reduced to net-zero by 2050, falling around 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030. This would, with high probability, limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.

It’s pretty ambitious to aim for Net Zero by 2050, since to see a more than 40 percent decrease in our CO2 emissions by 2030, which is what the pathway suggests, would require a massive change in the way we use and view energy.

There are many net-zero scenarios and the oil and gas sector is heavily impacted in each. All these scenarios have a fairly similar trajectory for oil and gas, and if we follow a Net Zero 2050 pathway, we’ve already hit peak oil.

To reach net zero by 2050, there will need to be a 70 percent reduction from 2020 to 2050 with oil demand never exceeding 100 million barrels a day. In fact, along this trajectory, we’ll see a rapid decline in oil demand, dropping sharply over the next three decades to 25 million barrels a day. On the same path, natural gas is yet to see its peak, but that’ll happen within this decade. With a more gradual decline to 2050 than oil, demand for natural gas will fall off by 40 percent.

OPEC is particularly well situated in the IEA Net Zero scenario with more than half the market share; if you’re a Middle Eastern country producing oil, the situation looks pretty good, so to speak. However, even if you’re still a producer with more than 50 percent market share, you have to consider the impact the reduced demand will have on revenues as diminished demand impacts oil prices. The challenge we’re going to face here is that the economic structures of the GCC countries are generally not compatible with a Net Zero world. While they have made some positive progress in economic diversification between 2010 and 2020, they are still heavily reliant on hydrocarbons for government revenues, exports, and economic activity. Among the GCC countries, the UAE is perhaps best positioned but also needs to make further progress. As it stands, this region, and many others, are not ready to jump straight into a Net Zero world trajectory.

Net Zero by 2050 assumes a very rapid global shift in energy consumption patterns, with a precipitous drop in demand for oil in particular. To follow this IEA recommendation, we would need to stop developing new oil fields immediately, with any new investment directed to maintaining production at existing fields. Likewise for natural gas, all investment would be used to sustain existing production to meet residual demand in the future.

However, many are still assuming that oil demand by 2030 will largely follow a trajectory based on current and announced government policies focused on climate and sustainability. This, coupled with the fact that a number of countries that are heavy energy consumers, such as India, are rejecting a rapid decarbonization trajectory indicates a good chance that demand for oil will increase by 2030. Confirming this notion, consulting firm Wood Makenzie announced recently that they foresee a 2030 oil demand supply gap of about 20 million barrels per day. This is not to say that Net Zero by 2050 is completely out of the question, but it’s unlikely given the fact that the need for increased oil production in the coming decade is a very real possibility.

However, while Net Zero by 2050 is debatable, planning for Net Zero is nonetheless important. There will be a net zero: maybe not by 2050, but someday it’s going to happen, and the low-cost hydrocarbon producers will be the ones that survive or at least last the longest.

When oil demand decreases, which it inevitably will, oil prices will fall and this will lead many oil-producing countries to have uneconomical or stranded oil reserves. If the asking price for a barrel of oil falls below the cost of production, countries will find themselves with oil reserves they cannot exploit without incurring a loss. Therefore, oil demand in the future will be optimally met by low-cost, low-carbon producers located in economies that can remain viable when faced with reduced income from oil and gas exports, such as the GCC producers.

In planning for net zero, companies in the oil and gas industry need to consider strategies involving reducing production costs, moving downstream into refining and petrochemical production, or investing in low-carbon energy, transitioning from ‘oil and gas’ companies to ‘energy’ companies. The strategy that players in this industry will pick is context dependent. National oil companies (NOCs) need to monetize their oil and gas reserves to the extent possible, and selected NOCs have downstream opportunities to explore. Many of these companies with downstream integration, which are located in the Middle East, and particularly in the GCC, can pursue potential long-term opportunities in refining and petrochemicals. Qatar in particular will bet on long-term demand for low-carbon natural gas, particularly LNG, and its derivative. It is expected that under any future scenario in which demand for oil remains, GCC countries will be prominent producers and gain market share, partly due to the low geopolitical risk in the region.

In the long-term, GCC national oil companies will pursue greener oil and gas production while also looking towards low-carbon energy sources that fit with Net Zero ambitions but align with core competencies. In this vein, hydrogen, particularly blue hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced primarily from steam methane reforming coupled with carbon capture, is an opportunity consistent with Net Zero pathways. Qatar, for example, is likely to focus on low-carbon gas supply for the production of blue hydrogen elsewhere, while Saudi Arabia, and perhaps the UAE, may produce blue hydrogen locally and export it or additionally see opportunities for importing and storing CO2 from blue hydrogen production abroad. Hydrogen is a core element of the IEA Net Zero plan, and the GCC countries are poised to produce and export blue hydrogen, its derivatives, and natural gas for hydrogen production elsewhere. However, finding the right business cases for the options to pursue is the current challenge.

As the IEA report says, reaching net zero by 2050 “requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies.” While 2050 is an ambitious goal, Net Zero will happen eventually and the global energy transition will, over time, reduce dependency on fossil energy sources. It’s clear that oil producers and exporters will increasingly face economic challenges as the transition unfolds but various strategies exist for continued prospects for GCC national oil companies in a Net Zero world. Gas producers and exporters are expected to have opportunities in low-carbon gases, particularly hydrogen, but hydrogen exports will not make up for long-term decline in oil export rents. The economic diversification initiatives currently underway in the region must continue.

Even as the world pursues decarbonization and emission reduction technologies in the pursuit of Net Zero, oil and gas will continue to play a role in many energy systems. It’s clear that oil and gas must be a part of the broader net zero conversation.Ěý

Dr. Steve Griffiths is the Senior Vice President of Research and Development and Professor of Practice at Khalifa University.

The post The Oil and Gas Industry in a Net Zero by 2050 World appeared first on Khalifa University.

Ro’ya Program will Raise Awareness among Students about Taking Up Petroleum Engineering-Related Majors and Potential Careers in Oil and Gas Ěý

Khalifa University and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) have announced the launch of a two-year Ro’ya program for high school students to educate them on the UAE’s oil and gas sector. The program that aims to raise awareness among the students about undertaking Petroleum Engineering-related academic majors and potential careers in the oil and gas sector, kicked off this summer.Ěý

The Ro’ya initiative underpins ADNOC’s corporate social responsibility efforts to invest in the education and development of the UAE’s students and enable them to contribute to the nation’s long-term economic growth. It also reflects the status of Khalifa University’s Petroleum Engineering Department, which is ranked 21st globally in the 2021 QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings by Subject.

Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi, Senior Vice-President, Academic and Student Services, Khalifa University, said: “We are glad to partner with ADNOC for the Ro’ya summer program that is designed to provide students with the right perspectives as they look forward to planning and choosing their future academic course. Khalifa University’s Petroleum Engineering program is ranked 24th globally, demonstrating the world-class quality of our faculty, cutting-edge laboratories, research centers, and state-of-the-art campus facilities that create the most advanced learning environment. We believe through the Ro’ya summer program, high school students will be able to dream their future and adopt the right approach that will help them materialize their vision.”Ěý

Ghannam AlMazrouei, ADNOC Director, Group Human Capital Directorate, said: “ADNOC is committed to supporting the development of the next generation of skilled workforce across the UAE’s oil and gas value chain and so we are pleased to partner with Khalifa University on the Ro’ya program. The program will provide our students with unique insights into the latest technologies, processes, and expertise used in the industry and highlight the exciting opportunities that our dynamic sector offers to young talent. We will continue to invest in STEM-related educational programs and initiatives to empower and foster our youth and help them build successful careers, in line with the UAE Centennial 2071 vision.”Ěý

The program will have two parts. The initial segment ran virtually from 11 July – 5 August 2021 and combined practical hands-on training, laboratory work, interactions with professional organizations, and project assignments related to the oil and gas industry, all virtually. In the second segment, Grade 11 students will have a one-week internship at Khalifa University that will include workshops and project presentations from December to January 2022, which will lead to another three-week program the following summer. Khalifa University faculty who are leading the program will remain in touch with the students over the entire period and support their projects.

The Outreach Department’s program for high school students from ADNOC Technical Institutes will involve Khalifa University’s Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering departments.

The first week of the initial segment of the program included virtual tours of ADNOC’s Panorama Digital Command Center and Thamama Center of Excellence, and presentations on geology from relative to absolute dating, as well as palaeontology, stratigraphy, correlation techniques, and isotopes. The week also covered scales in geology from small to large, microscopy, fieldwork, seismic reflection geophysics, and reservoir characterization. Participants learnt about the geology of the Middle East and worked together to build a geologic model of a field.Ěý

The second week introduced students to oilfield services company Schlumberger, with tours of its Al Shamkhah Technical Learning Center in Abu Dhabi. The week also included visits to Khalifa University’s Reservoir Rock Properties Lab, Reservoir Fluids Properties Lab, Well Drilling and Drilling Fluids Lab, and the Petroleum Reservoir Simulation Lab.Ěý

In the final week, participants received presentations from professional organizations such as the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), and Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). Interactions with the alumni and current Khalifa University students were also part of the agenda during the week. Other events included sessions on ‘Lead with Ro’ya’ and a workshop on webpage development, as well as a visual interactive platform for exploration and production in the oil and gas industry.

Clarence Michael
English Editor Specialist
9 August 2021

The post Khalifa University and ADNOC to Organize Program to Educate High School Students on the UAE’s Oil and Gas Sector appeared first on Khalifa University.

Senior Vice President of Research and Development Dr. Steve Griffiths shares insights from his recent EDA report and upcoming WFES panel on the value of bilateral diplomacy for oil exporters

Energy diplomacy – specifically bilateral diplomacy – is an invaluable tool for countries navigating the changing global energy landscape and their own energy transitions. The UAE, as country transitioning from a hydrocarbon-dependent economy, to a diversified knowledge economy, provides many lessons for other hydrocarbon economies, which also offer indications for where to further direct the country’s diplomatic efforts.

I recently published a report with the , in which I shared my overview and analysis of bilateral energy diplomacy as a foreign policy tool, analyzed the strategic objectives of bilateral energy diplomacy for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, provided a case study on the UAE, and ended with foreign policy conclusions and recommendations for enhancing bilateral energy diplomacy for the UAE and all hydrocarbon-exporting countries.

The report findings, which I will be discussing at the upcoming World Future Energy Summit (WFES) Energy Transition Forum Program, in a panel on 15 January titled ‘’, explain how the UAE is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the current state of flux in the energy market through energy diplomacy.

The world is in the early stages of its energy transition away from dependence on hydrocarbons to renewable energy. This change presents many challenges for oil and gas exporting countries in terms of their economic and political relationships and calculus, particularly those, like the UAE, which are simultaneously developing clean energy technologies.

The UAE has already been developing strategic bilateral relationships regionally and globally in an effort to effectively position itself for the energy transition. In 2017 the UAE launched its Soft Power Strategy, which aims to increase the UAE’s global reputation abroad by highlighting to the world its identity, heritage, culture and global contributions. The pillars of this strategy are diplomacy in its many forms, including humanitarian, scientific and academic, cultural and economic.

The UAE’s core energy relationships are currently with China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand, and each of these countries factors strongly into the UAE’s foreign policy not only as a market for oil exports, but also for broader energy and economic relations. Incidentally, each of the UAE’s key Asian trade partners is also classified as ‘special’, according to the bilateral diplomatic relations classifications of peripheral, normal, and special. This reveals the importance that the UAE gives to these relationships.

As bilateral energy diplomacy aims to ensure a country’s long-term energy security and economic well-being by fostering foreign relationships with energy suppliers and customers, I recommend the UAE continue to strengthen its relationships and efforts in bilateral energy diplomacy. The UAE’s dual energy diplomacy interests arising from the globalenergy transition include developing business opportunities to monetize the country’s hydrocarbon resources and ensuring economic diversification that lessens dependence on oil export revenues.

Based on these considerations, I make the following bilateral energy diplomacy recommendations:

Develop special bilateral relationships with countries that can provide strategic benefit during the energy transition: The UAE has already established special strategic bilateral relationships with a number of countries that are important partners for energy and economic reasons. Additional special relationships may be formed with countries that have strong capabilities in key growth areas such as petrochemicals.

Engage key national stakeholders beyond the ministry or department overseeing foreign affairs in the fostering of special bilateral relationships: Special bilateral relationships require regular consultations between partner countries and the UAE’s political leadership. These consultations will of course include the UAEĚýMinistry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation but should extend to other UAE ministries dealing with energy, industry, environment and technology. Organizations such as ADNOC and Mubadala already play an important diplomatic role in bilateral energy diplomacy and their engagement is important.

Develop and leverage soft power in bilateral energy relationships: The UAE has effectively exercised soft power via multiple bilateral investment relationships established by Mubadala as well as other UAE government organizations. The establishment of UAE-China Week is a further effort toward soft power that could be replicated in other key bilateral relations.

Pursue bilateral collaborations to advance national science and technology capabilities:Digitalization, and particularly AI, is one of the most critical areas of advanced technology development across all industries. The UAE’s strong bilateral ties with countries at the forefront of AI, especially China, make AI collaboration an important opportunity that can have direct benefit for the country’s energy sector.

Engage in multilateral diplomacy to complement bilateral efforts: Multilateral diplomacy will continue to be important for the UAE to secure a voice in global energy governance. This means that the UAE’s current strong engagements with the IRENA, OPEC and other multilateral organizations that are shaping the global energy dialogue are essential.

While these recommendations are derived from analysis of the UAE’s context and initiatives, they are broadly applicable to the bilateral energy diplomacy of hydrocarbon-exporting countries.

Dr. Steve Griffiths is Senior Vice President of Research and Development at the Khalifa University of Science and Technology.

The post Tapping Energy Diplomacy to Boost UAE’s Economic Transition appeared first on Khalifa University.

Team Demonstrates Energy and Cost Savings Potential for Acid Gas Enrichment Units

A collaborative project at the Khalifa University Center for Catalysis and Separation has explored how to improve the sustainability of the acid gas enrichment (AGE) process in natural gas processing plants operating in hot countries, to reduce their carbon footprint and improve energy efficiency.

When natural gas contains containing significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, it is considered ‘sour gas’ and has to undergo processes that remove the acidic components through a process called ‘gas sweetening’.

Gas sweetening units produce a by-product known as ‘acid gas’ besides the main product named ‘sweet gas’. Acid gas, which is a mixture of H2S and CO2 predominately, is processed further in sulfur recovery units to prevent the emission of sulfur species and recover the elemental sulfur. If the acid gas contains low concentrations of H2S, an AGE unit is employed to enrich the H2S content of the acid gas. AGE units also produce a CO2-rich stream besides the enriched acid gas. In hot climates like in the UAE, high ambient temperature leads to AGE operation with hotter solvents, which results in higher energy consumption in the regeneration section of the plant. In order to reduce this inefficiency, the team considered the use of a scheme for cooling the solvent within an AGE unit, to reduce the operational energy.

The team was composed of Khalifa University Associate Professor Dr. Abdallah S. Berrouk, Assistant Professor Dr. Yasser F. AlWahedi, Research Engineer Satyadileep Dara, and Chemical Engineering alumna Aisha A. AlHammadi, along with Abdulla Al Shaiba from Al Yasat Petroleum Operations Company Ltd and Fadi Al Khasawneh from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Ěý

“We looked to integrate a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube (RHVT) within the acid gas enrichment unit to decrease its energy consumption while enhancing the purity of the resulting gas product,” Dara explained. He was the lead author on a recently published paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production titled .

A RHVT is aĚýmechanical deviceĚýthat separates a compressedĚýgasĚýinto hot and cold streams. Requiring no moving parts, electricity, or Freon, it instead leverages principles of physics to separate the gases into a hot end that can reach temperatures of 200Ěý°C and a cold end that can reach −50Ěý°C, making it an energy-efficient cooling tool. RHVTs are often used in to cool cutting toolsĚýthat heat up during use.

This potential solution to reduce the energy waste of AGE was inspired by the team’s knowledge of the UAE’s Mirfa plant.

“We were aware that the Mirfa plant produced high pressured nitrogen as a by-product of the air separation unit in the same plant complex, and realized that integrating a nitrogen-fed RHVT was the best option to reduce energy wastage, given the available resources and resulting economics,” Dara shared.

In the team’s proposed solution, the high-pressure nitrogen enters the RHVT and is separated into hotter and colder streams. The latter is then mixed with ambient air in an air-nitrogen mixer to provide a coolant stream at sufficiently lower temperatures, such that it cools down the lean solvent to the desired levels. Lower lean solvent temperature in turn results in significant reduction in energy consumption and higher product purities.

The solution they proposed was tested and validated in process simulator ProMax, which found that at the optimal temperature, their proposed RHVT solution can achieve 13 kg/s in steam savings (equivalent to 40% reduction in total steam rate). This reduced energy consumption leads to an annual carbon dioxide footprint reduction of 83.7 million kg, which is equal to a 40% reduction in the plant’s total carbon dioxide footprint. Economically, the evaluated annual energy savings translate to USD11.2 million.

The team believes that the solution they have hit upon can be utilized in sour gas processing plants in hot climates, all of which struggle with reducing energy wastage due to the high temperatures of the solvents.

“Hot climate regions like that of the Gulf would benefit significantly from the proposed scheme, since it results in a coolant stream that is not readily available in hot regions due to the high ambient temperature. And while our project used pressurized nitrogen from a specific facility, in fact any high pressure stream can be used as the working fluid for the RHVT, like compressed ambient air. Regardless what gas is used, we have demonstrated that the integration of RHVT can help a natural gas processing plant operating in hot climate achieve increased operational efficiency in terms of product quality and energy consumption,” Dr. AlWahedi added.

Following their simulation based work, the team are now doing laboratory-scale tests to assess the performance of RHVT to provide a quantitative prediction of levels of cooling achieved using the RHVT.

Zarina Khan

Senior Editor

26 November 2018

The post Cooling Amine Solvent Using Vortex Tubes appeared first on Khalifa University.