The increasing global demand for oil and gas has led to major challenges in the energy sector, both for the national oil companies [NOCs] and major resource holders, as well as the international oil companies [IOCs], such as Shell. Higher global energy prices now make it commercially viable to extract hydrocarbons from more complex and difficult formations, as well as from previously unexplored areas.
By these I mean the particularly remote and highly challenging areas - such as the South Rub ’al-Khali [Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter], where Shell is currently exploring for gas - which make the transportation of discovered hydrocarbons costly and logistically complicated.
The same is true of deepwater locations, which demand the use of highly specialised technology and are, once again, relatively complex and costly operations - for example, Shell is facing such challenges in its NEMED [North East Mediterranean Deepwater] concession offshore Egypt.
Shell’s Middle East production capacity forms a major part of Shell’s global production levels of both oil and gas. We expect this to increase considerably over the next few years as significant growth in oil and gas production is anticipated across the region.
An important factor for the way Shell produces hydrocarbons is to achieve top performance from our wells, facilities and infrastructure, on a day-in, day-out basis, since this forms the mainstay of our production and our income.
In the production process we have to ensure that plant, machinery and equipment reliability is as good as we can get it. Indeed, in the majority of our production units across the region this is world-class.
A large number of our production facilities are located in remote and difficult desert environments which can be extremely hard on people, machinery and equipment. Furthermore, we are working with products that are potentially dangerous, namely oil and gas, and the many dangerous by-products that we have to deal with in the production process, such as CO2 [carbon dioxide] and H2S [hydrogen sulphide].
HSSE [Health, Safety, Security and Environmental] issues are, therefor, of paramount importance to Shell, and the integrity of our production operations at all levels is vital.
Shell’s Goal Zero programme, which forms a part of the Shell Group’s continuing drive to improve safety and environmental standards in Shell companies on a global level, has the fundamental objective of ‘no hurt to people, no harm to the environment’.
The Goal Zero programme is being rolled out not just across the Middle East, not just in exploration and production, but in every single part of Shell’s business operations and in every country in which we operate. So the company’s goal for each and every member of staff is that they go home safely every day and with minimum impact on the environment in which they operate.
Process safety is also a major concern for Shell in all its production processes. It means making sure that all of the plant and its many components are safe to operate, that all equipment and machinery is reliable and ready for the job at hand and in good condition to prevent accidents. Planned and preventive maintenance programmes are, therefore, crucial to ensure that our facilities are safe and we must know that for a fact.
Another dimension of the production process is to ensure that we minimise our impact on the environment, whether it be emissions to the air or discharges of liquids or solids to the ground. Today the world is very much concerned with the issue of CO2 emissions and Shell is playing a leading role in reducing CO2 emissions from all its operations.
Indeed, in the Middle East in particular there is tremendous emphasis on eliminating continuous flaring from all production operations and a drive to increase the efficiency of all our operations by, for example, maximising the use of waste heat from our production plants.
This is especially relevant in countries that face serious shortages of gas in commerical and industrial sectors and which, at the same time, are seeing an enormous increase in demand due to rising population levels.
I have described some of the production challenges in managing our assets across the region but it is our people who are our most valuable assets and this is particularly true in the case of the production process, which tends to employ the majority of staff in our operating units.
The development and training of staff is essential and Shell places a great deal of importance on staff competence development to ensure that staff working in the production process are qualified and trained to do their jobs.
So I would like to thank the many thousands of production staff working for Shell and its joint ventures across the region for their dedication and professionalism and who continue to demonstrate and deliver excellence in our operations across the region.
