Oil and gas needs to go hand in hand with green and blue energy

7 june 2024 0000

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This Forum gives an opportunity to meet some decision-makers in the Azerbaijan region. It is also interesting to hear the opinions of others, so, here we can listen in, learn, and bring information back to my company.
First and foremost, the subject of my speech is new technology and AI, so, what I will try and push is that the operators and we as the sub-supplier need to get together and actually make this data liberation happen, because today there are many barriers for data liberation, regulation and authorities is one thing, but also the operators themselves sort of sit on valuable data that can benefit others, not just us.
From my perspective, coming from ABB, which is a very heavy technology and product supplier, there seems to be more businesspeople here than technocrats, but I will fine tune it so that they understand it as well.
Regarding the key topics discussed at this event, I think the whole subject of energy transition and what we are doing going forward – all that combined with what Azerbaijan and the rest of the globe needs to do in order to make this energy transition happen is an important message coming out from here. We have had very many good inputs today from both political aspects and sort of business aspects.
Hopefully, this one together with similar conferences will sort of send a message to everybody that this energy transition needs to happen, and it needs to move forward at a pace we are not yet seeing. And then in the short term, I think, here at this conference we also get to understand a lot about the short-term plans of Azerbaijan and the energy companies in the region which is also good for us as a supplier because it gives us the ability to also position ourselves in the short term. So, this event is definitely of use to me and my company, but then also there is a question whether it will do something locally or globally. To achieve global change, I think, this Forum needs to team up with other similar forums and convey the same message, while seeing the level of persons speaking here, I certainly hope that it will make an impact locally for Azerbaijan and that it will also bring not only energy transition, but also good business into the region. Over the next 30 years we will see that the oil and gas needs to go hand in hand with the solar and wind and hydrogen and carbon capture, and we need to make equal systems that make it possible to operate these seamlessly. It’s not like it’s only about green energy because that won’t be sufficient neither for Azerbaijan or for any other countries; we need an energy mix, but that brings challenges: how do you control the grid, how do you know when there is wind or sun here in Azerbaijan, for instance. Since I have been here, I haven’t seen a cloud, but there is a challenge as these new energy sources do not produce energy constantly, so, we need to find ways of combining the traditional energy sources and then we also need to find good storage opportunities for energy. If we get to the point when we only have solar, wind, and other green energies or we can call them blue – blue hydrogen, for instance – then we also need things that store the energy. Transforming hydrogen into ammonia might be one alternative because ships run on ammonia fuel, but of course you need huge involvement in the battery technologies and may be some time in the future something else will appear that will make it possible to store energy efficiently.

Hans-Bjarne Claussen
Digital Lead for Energy Industries, UK
ABB

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