It was indeed a pleasure to attend Gastech 2021, September 21-23 at the World Trade Center Exhibition Center Dubai. What an event!! For anyone interested in gas as a business and its role in the energy transition this was the conference to attend.
The two streams of interest to me were the Strategic and Technical streams. Being a Strategic Delegate I had the opportunity to attend both the technical and strategic sessions live and visit the Exhibition Hall. As an added bonus the SPE/ACTE was hosted at the same venue and the Strategic pass allowed me to visit the SPE Exhibition, which I did.
The sessions were opened by a panel consisting of the OPEC General Secretary and Energy ministers from Qatar, UAE, Turkey and Indonesia. Great ideas were shared on the future of gas as an energy transition fuel, with the OPEC General Secretary reminding us that gas producers need to re-establish a narrative that establishes the value of gas and not forget that energy poverty is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
The Hydrogen pavilion was a new and important segment of this conference. There were sessions dealing with how to get hydrogen to export scale, hydrogen transport, decarbonizing of hydrogen production, hydrogen in efuel production, and how LNG technology led to liquid hydrogen. Attendees quickly got informed on many elements of the hydrogen ecosystem with great talks and exhibits. This made the conference a special learning experience for me.
On the Technical Stream, floating LNG was the topic du jour. Everything points to the growth of LNG in the coming years driving the growth of engineering systems to produce LNG from stranded areas by the use of floating systems. There were many great technical discussions and exhibits which certainly create options for smaller scale LNG. The conference also presented new shipping designs for transporting carbon dioxide which may in the future drive pathways to decarbonize production and use of hydrocarbons by giving commercial options to connect carbon source and sinks.
The Strategic Stream was no less interesting. Gas and LNG trading, Net Zero strategies, how to finance energy projects with Net Zero in mind, hydrogen blending into existing infrastructure among many other topics were discussed. These left me with many ideas how to guide Bifrost Energy’s mandate to be an agent to decarbonize the hydrocarbon stream.
This was an important conference for me, and I look forward to having the entire Bifrost Team attend Gastech 2022 in Milan.
Steve Geetan