Opening the Institut Français du Pétrole's Panorama conference in Paris this month, an event billed as majoring on "energy and the environment," Jean-François Giannesini, advisor to the IFP chairman, chose to leave industrial environmental issues to the latter half of his time at the podium.
To begin with, he concentrated on the dominant industry talking point of the last year: crude price stability-and its attendant subplots (production quota solidarity among Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members, stock drawdowns, market speculation, and so on)-all set against the backdrop of fears being voiced recently in some quarters of a looming and unprecedented energy crisis.
Giannesini's deduction: "At mid-century, reserves were less than 100 billion bbl. Now, they stand at 1,000 billion bbl and represent 36 years of consumption at the present rate."
Principal energy challenge
The tack of his speech was politic, for it allowed him to hinge together two topics-reserves depletion and the environment-with which the oil industry has traditionally felt different degrees of comfort.
"Hydrocarbon reserves should not present insurmountable problems for decades to come," he argued. "Can we make a similar statement about the environmental impact of hydrocarbon consumption?"
The broad answer to meeting this "principal energy challenge of the years to come," to Giannesini's mind, is for industry to take on global greenhouse gas emissions "with the same resources backed by science and technology" as are presently devoted to reserves replacement.
What Giannesini proceeded to provide was a delineation of how a shift in perspective might fundamentally change the approach being taken by the oil industry to one of its thorniest problems.
Because a strong link between greenhouse gas emissions, chiefly CO2 , and global warming has been established in the minds of many, he advocates a move toward "clean hydrocarbon utilization" on the grounds of it being a "business imperative," as well as a "social necessity" for industry and countries alike.
Emission rights market
Advances in CO2 sequestration-thermodynamic, chemical, biochemical-are making the technology not only more viable, he noted, but could-especially if a global emissions rights market becomes a reality-kick-start a global hydrocarbon decarbonization industry. For countries, post-Kyoto Protocol, the prize is necessarily larger still.
"What is at stake is nothing less than [a country's] technological independence in the environmental protection sector and its positioning as seller or buyer in a market that could be extremely lucrative," said Giannesini. For France, which he said will release an average tonnes/year of 31 million CO2 during 2005-20, at a theoretical cost of 100 euros/ton, this would translate into an annual market worth 3.1 billion euros.
Giannesini's voice is a sanguine one-but he is no less a realist. The onus to find answers to greenhouse gas emissions rests foremost with the industry that, according to International Energy Agency figures, produces the fuels responsible for 62% of industrial CO2 emissions. This responsibility, he says, is more pressing for the fact that the "day when current hydrocarbon utilization practices will no longer be tolerated seems to be closer than the day when reserves will be depleted."
