The Kingdom took part in the World Petroleum Congress (WPC) held in Houston, Texas from 5 to 9 December.
In an interactive and innovative way, the Ministry set up a pavilion that highlights the Kingdom’s prominent climate-related initiatives and nationally determined contributions.
The booth has also held workshops and seminars presented by specialists from across the energy ecosystem.
The Kingdom’s participation in such events and exhibitions is part of its global effort in addressing climate change through breakthrough initiatives, such as the Circular Carbon Economy (CCE), which was launched during the Kingdom’s G20 presidency in 2020.
CCE is a comprehensive and integrated framework to address and manage GHG emissions through the 4R’s: Reduce; Reuse; Recycle; and Remove.
Many energy sector officials, experts, and heads of companies, organizations, and scientific and research centers from around the world visited the Ministry’s pavilion.
The pavilion has also held several workshops and seminars.
From King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), Linah AlHamdan, information management specialist, presented an overview of the center’s project “The Circular Carbon Economy Index”. The project aims at supporting the use of the CCE framework by putting forward a set of shared indicators to measure counties’ performance and potential for reaching CCE. The index has 37 performance indicators, 8 of which measure performance while 29 measure the enabling factors.
From the National Energy Services Company (Tarshid), Mudhayan AlMudhayan, Head of Planning and Control, presented an overview of the company, during which he reviewed the company's objectives and role in rationalizing energy consumption in the Kingdom through government building retrofit projects. The company, AlMudhayn noted, has agreed contracts at the end of the third quarter of 2021 to generate yearly savings of approximately 3.8 TWh annually.
Similarly, Aramco Gulf Operations Company (AGOC) shared its experience in planting mangrove trees and other green plants effective in capturing CO2 in Al-Khafji city. Dr. Ghazi Al-Qahtani, General Supervisor of Petroleum Engineering and Development at AGOC presented some of the initiative’s results. The number of trees planted so far has exceeded 4,000 and more than one million seeds of different types of plants have been sown, Dr. Ghazi noted.
Abdullah Al-Fawaz, Director of Petroleum Operations and Engineering at AGOC, reviewed the company's efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. He gave an example of a gas and natural gas liquids capturing and processing project that has reduced gas emissions from 20 million cubic feet per day to less than 1 million cubic feet per day.
