Shell, Petronas executives argue they are part of lower-carbon future
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 04:11:29 +0000
Petronas, a major natural gas producer, has taken the equivalent of 7,500 vehicles off the road by using solar arrays to power its pump station sites in Northeast B.C. gas fields.
Shell Canada has electrified its B.C. well sites to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 91 per cent as part of a companywide campaign to reduce its net carbon impact by half by 2050.
“For Shell, this is about the transformation of energy and we’re very much for energy transformation,” Michael Crothers, president and country chair for Shell Canada, said Wednesday during a Postmedia editorial board meeting.
And as partners building the $40-billion LNG Canada liquefied natural gas development in Kitimat, the energy giants haven’t lost sight of their need to reduce their own carbon impact, even if that development increases B.C.’s overall carbon output.
“It’s the most important question we wrestle with,” said Mark Fitzgerald, CEO of Petronas Canada. “We think it’s good business to move in that direction because of expectations globally. … We know there is a clear need for emissions reductions globally.”
And in a federal election year in Canada, as international pressure mounts on governments to take action on climate change, the executives are on something of a promotional tour to continue pressing their case that natural gas remains a “transitional fuel” to get developing nations off of coal.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the world’s governments have until 2030 to act on emission-reduction targets and avoid a climate catastrophe.
Actions to do so, however, have to grapple with the proverbial immovable object of rising energy demand across the Pacific, said Fitzgerald.
“The fundamentals in the market aren’t going away,” Fitzgerald said. “When we talk about growth in energy demand, it’s not next year or the year after, we’re talking about 10, 20, 30 years.”
And while both Shell and Petronas are among fossil-fuel companies investing in renewable energy, Fitzgerald said the major international projections are that renewable sources won’t be able to fill that demand “no matter how much investment occurs.”
In May, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, told a clean-energy summit in Vancouver that energy use in 2018 grew the most it had in 10 years, with half coming from natural gas.
And with countries such as China and India leaning on natural gas to reduce particulate air pollution for their populations, LNG coupled with carbon capture and sequestration technology will remain important options for trying to curb emissions, Birol said.
Wednesday, the executives argued that on that front, B.C. still has a role in its nascent LNG sector. With an electricity grid that is 98 per cent hydro power, B.C. can produce LNG with about half the CO2 emissions than other producing countries, meaning the province can have a bigger impact on the transition to lower-carbon fuel sources.
Crothers said the industry believes it can remain relevant and sustainable during the transition because of the industry’s technological innovations.
“Here’s the opportunity for Canadians to provide almost the last molecule of gas standing,” Crothers said, “because it’s going to be the most competitive and lowest carbon intensive (source).”
“Broadly, that’s the story for us as a group of producers in B.C.”