ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT

THE FOLLOWING article is based on one written by Petro-Logistics, which the British Institution of Chemical Engineers published in June. In November last year The Chemical Engineer reported on the commitment of a group of the international oil industry’s chief executives to action on climate change through their Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.

These chief executives represented BG Group, BP, Eni, Pemex, Reliance Industries, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil and Total.

A year earlier the same journal had reported on resistance of member states to the European Commission’s Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), which was pushing for “a methodology and thus an incentive to choose less polluting fuels over more polluting ones like, for example, oil sands”. The Canadian government had strongly objected to the commission’s plans.

Imagine the development of much cleaner conversion technology in the oil refinery. Hopefully this is part of what the chief executives are promising.

Clearly there are formidable vested interests in opposition to the idea but, if measures can be taken to hasten the move away from use of coal, then surely we should not shy away from the need