According to Vicki Hollub, president and CEO at Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), effectively navigating the climate transition requires the energy industry, writ large, to carefully plan its strategies.
“You have to really plan out the climate transition,” Hollub said. “You can’t move too rapidly, and you have to use all of the tools available to you.”
“There’s no doubt,” Hollub continued, “that no matter what problem we look at, carbon capture and sequestration have to be a part of the mix. Without that, it just can’t happen.”
People within the industry sometimes forget that transition discussion should not be exclusively about the fuel source. “The discussion has to be what we do with emissions,” Hollub said.
Further, the “unbridled and undirected passion” to eliminate fossil fuels exhibited by some, she said, is detrimental to that discussion.
“How we collaborate together, how we pull together to solve the world’s greatest problems, today,” is a much more practical and effective approach to solving the climate crisis.
Hollub observed that before Russia invaded Ukraine, “certainly, climate transition was the biggest issue we had,” and the invasion “makes it all the more complicated in terms of what we do on a global basis.”
Despite these global pressures that face the industry, Hollub encouraged leaders to stay the course at the 2022 Society of Petroleum Engineers Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, held recently in Houston.
Hollub encouraged industry leaders to do what they do better and to share best safety practices to further help address climate transition.
Barton Cahir, senior VP of upstream portfolio development with ExxonMobil Upstream Company, said most industry leaders and stakeholders recognize the need for more oil and gas investment.
“They recognize that that’s going to be there through the energy transition, and upstream oil and gas is a big part of the energy mix of the future,” he said. “That’s important, but it’s not an either/or thing.”
ExxonMobil, Cahir noted, is committed to its role in the energy transition.
“We’ve demonstrated that you can burn these supplies and grow production while (simultaneously) reducing emissions,” he said.
Cahir said he is very proud of what ExxonMobil teams have done in the Permian Basin.
“By the end of this decade, we’re going to be at net zero in total emissions in our Permian operations while continuing to grow production. So the ‘and’ proposition is possible.”
Olivier Lepeuch, CEO with Schlumberger, said he agrees with Hollub’s and Cahir’s approach to climate transition and carbon capture.
“We have the talent, and we have the technology, but technology has to be innovative and technology has to be scaled,” he said. “We must find a way, with respect and humility.”
The important thing in addressing cli- mate transition, Hollub said, is that “ultimately, we have to get the world to accept that carbon dioxide can actually be seques- tered in reservoirs. CO2 does stay in a reservoir. Some of it is recyclable, but about 40% of recycled CO remains in the reservoir.
Unless you’ve got some kind of perfect scenario, the more CO2 we can keep in the reservoir today, the better. That’s unlike what we’ve done in the past.”
Cahir reminded industry colleagues that the landscape is changing fast.
“There is lots of uncertainty in the commitment to achieve net zero, and the decisions we make today may last 10 to 20 years,” he concluded. “I don’t have a crystal ball to help me predict exactly what’s going to happen, but we need to make some really, really smart choices.”