Oil major has capacity to house 1,500 scientists for work on energy projects

As chief technology officer of Royal Dutch Shell, Yuri Sebregts’ job is to ensure the world’s second-largest publicly-traded oil firm develops technologies to deliver projects and products across the world faster and more economically.

This includes helping the company, whose revenues were $233.6 billion last year, plan for the future after fossil fuels. Chasing this mission, Mr. Sebregts was recently in Bengaluru to open a new technology centre and to scout for start-ups here.

30 football fields

The centre, equal to more than 30 football fields, is one of three main global technology hubs, alongside those in Houston, U.S. and Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

“One of the reasons to pick Bengaluru is the vibrant technology development community around it,” said Mr. Sebregts in an interview. “This includes the start-up community as well as other tech-savvy companies, academic institutes and the whole ecosystem coming together.”

The facility can house up to 1,500 experts, who would collaboratively work on worldwide innovative energy projects. It has expertise in fields such as liquefied natural gas, subsurface modelling, data analysis, engineering design, water technology and enhanced computational research.

The centre is also making efforts — using its IH2 (waste to fuel) technology — to turn forestry, agricultural and municipal waste into transportation fuels. A new demonstration plant is being built at the site. Mr. Sebregts said that India had a very large highly-educated, tech-savvy workforce with in-depth scientific knowledge.

Energy ideas

Shell also brought the ‘Make the future Accelerator’ programme to India for the first time. It aims to encourage and accelerate the ecosystem of start-ups for the development of bright energy ideas around the world.

Graviky Labs, a Bengaluru-based start-up which captures air pollution and turns it into inks was selected for this year’s accelerator programme. Graviky has developed ‘Kaalink,’ a retrofit technology which captures carbon emissions from vehicles or chimneys before it enters the atmosphere.

The captured pollutants are then recycled into ink, branded Air-Ink, that can be used to draw, write and paint.

Mr. Sebregts said that the challenge of cleaner energy is too big and too complex for single institute or company to solve. To tackle that, innovation needs to come from all the kind of sources. “We work with a lot with start-ups. They are very agile, fast paced sources of ideas and they can often do great things,” said Mr. Sebregts.

Shell is already bringing in innovations developed outside the company to produce energy more quickly. For instance, it used MRI scanners, the medical imaging tools used in hospitals, to examine rock samples for insights into reservoir rock formations.

Gravity information

Like the geobrowser Google Earth, Shell has also used a method of exhibiting satellite pictures. But instead of the streets, it looked below the earth’s surface. In fact, the company assessed magnetic and gravity information from the space using data from the European Space Agency’s satellite.

The data enhanced its knowledge about the interiors of the earth, including where oil and gas might be discovered.