IN BRIEF NEW S MIDDLE EAST
Saudi Aramcoand China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) have signed a memorandum of under- standing (MoU) related to the ongoing development of the Red Sea Refining Company (RSRC), a world- class, full-conversion refinery in Yanbu’, on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. The companies have agreed to initially subscribe to equity interests of 62.5% (Saudi Aramco) and 37.5% (Sinopec) in RSRC should they proceed to formally participate in a joint ven- ture. The new refinery will use existing Saudi Aramco facilities to receive crude oil and export refined products. It will include refinery process units, utilities and interconnecting piping, associated feedstock and refined product storage, as well as offsite facilities necessary to support safe and efficient operations. Scheduled to be operational in 2014, the refinery will process 400,000 b/d of Arabian Heavy crude oil and produce 90,000 b/d of gasoline, 263,000 b/d of ultra-low sul- phur diesel, 6,300 t/d of petcoke and 1,200 t/d of sulphur.
ASIA-PACIFIC
South Korea’s Finance Minister has reported that the government is drawing up measures that will ensure refiners are more transparent in their price setting policies and reduce costs, according to Platts. The country’s four refiners are reported to have been making use of fluctuations in interna- tional crude prices to raise retail prices and increase profits. Quick to raise domestic prices of oil products on rising international crude prices, passing higher import costs to cus- tomers, they have been said to have been slow to reduce domestic prices in response to lower import prices when crude prices have gone down.
AFRICA
An Indian sustainable energy com- pany, Abellon CleanEnergy, has promised to convert 10,000 hectares of degraded land in Ghana to pro- duce biofuel feedstock such as bamboo, palmarosa and sweet sorghum, reports Keith Nuthall. It will process the crops at a planned biofuel plant. The pledge comes through the Business Call to Action (BCtA) global initiative, helping com- panies fight poverty through their core business.
8
downstream National renewable energy action plans
The REPAP2020 consortium – composed of EREC, Eufores, national RES associa- tions, Fraunhofer ISI, the Technical University of Vienna and Becker Büttner Held – has launched three reports analysing in detail the National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) presented by the 27 EU member states to the European Commission (EU) under the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) Directive. ‘The NREAPs expect the share of RES
to reach 20.7% of final energy con- sumption by 2020, but the RES industry – based on the NREAPs’ energy demand scenarios – shows that 24.4% renew- able energy in final energy demand can be achieved,’ said President of EREC Arthouros Zervos. The NREAPs expect the share of RES to meet 34.3%of elec- tricity demand, 21.3%of heating and cooling and 11.3% of transport con- sumption, while the RES industry – based on the NREAPs’ energy demand scenarios – suggests that 42.3% of elec- tricity consumption, 23.5% of heating and cooling and 12.2% of transport consumption is attainable. ‘The reports show that some NREAPs
present very positive initiatives with new measures in the electricity or the heating and cooling sectors. However, they also underline that some NREAPs are not ambitious enough to meet the targets. One cannot emphasise enough the importance of introducing stable and reliable national support schemes to provide investment security over the next 10 years to the RES industry,’ com- mented Zervos. ‘The acceleration of administrative procedures and infrastructure develop-
ments should receive substantially more attention in the NREAPs as well as the strengthening of support schemes, particularly in the renewable heating sector,’ continued Mario Ragwitz, Head of Business Unit, Renewable Energies at the Fraunhofer ISI. ‘We support the EC in its endeavor to swiftly call on member states to ful- fill their obligations’ concluded Doerte Fouquet from Becker Büttner Held. The objective of the EU funded pro-
ject REPAP2020 is to facilitate the implementation at national level of the Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (2009/28/EC). The three reports are published in the framework of this pro- ject. The first report, Assessment of National Renewable Energy Action Plans (
http://www.repap2020.eu/ fileadmin/user_upload/Roadmaps/Asse ssment_of_NREAPs__REPAP_report_- _interim_status_.pdf) by Fraunhofer ISI and the Technical University of Vienna/EEG, presents a detailed evalua- tion of the NREAPs. The second report, EU Roadmap:Mapping renewable energy pathways towards 2020 (
http://www.repap2020.eu/fileadmin/ user_upload/Roadmaps/EREC- roadmap-V4_final.pdf), conducted by EREC, compares 2020 industry projec- tions for renewable energy develop- ments with the NREAP projections using the same energy demand scenario. Last, but not least, Becker Büttner Held pre- sents recommendations for national measures to be taken to meet the 2020 targets (
http://www.repap2020.eu/ fileadmin/user_upload/Roadmaps/ Recommendations_BBH.pdf).
CCS regulatory review in Canada
Experts from around the globe are to help guide a carbon capture and storage (CCS) regulatory framework assessment in the Canadian province of Alberta. The assessment will examine in detail the environmental, safety and assurance processes for CCS that exist and determine what, if any, new processes need to be put in place for commercial-scale deployment of the technology. The six-member
expert panel will be co-chaired by Stefan Bachu, Distinguished Scientist for CO2 Storage with Alberta Innovates Technology Futures and Don Thompson, President of the Oil SandsDevelopers Group. Bachu co-shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The review will look at the existing regulatory regime in Alberta as well as CCS frameworks from other jurisdictions, and focus on a number of areas including regulatory, environmental, geological and technical considerations as well as mea- suring, monitoring and verification requirements. Alberta has committed some C$2bn to advance commercial-scale technologies
that will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions in the province by 5mn t/y by 2015. Of the four CCS projects for which letters of intent or contracts have been signed,
two will reduce CO2 emissions in the upgrading and refining of oil sands bitumen, another will gasify deep coal deposits to produce a clean burning synthetic fuel for
electricity generation, and a fourth will see construction of a pipeline to move
industrial CO2 emissions to enhance recoveries from conventional oil fields. The panel will report back to the Minister of Energy in autumn 2012.
PETROLEUMREVIEW APRIL 2011
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