Saudi Aramco, the world's leading integrated energy and chemicals company, has reinforced its commitment to reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions, at annual Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) meeting in New York.

Saudi Aramco, a founding member of the OGCI, joined several major oil and gas companies and key energy and climate leaders for the fourth annual meeting of OGCI yesterday (Sept 24) in New York.

At the meeting, CEOs of OGCI’s 10 existing member companies and the three newly-joined members, discussed the industry’s approaches to decrease greenhouse gas emissions with key stakeholders.

The OGCI also unveiled plans to reduce the collective, average methane intensity of members’ core upstream oil and gas operations to below 0.25 percent by 2025, with the ambition of reaching 0.2 percent corresponding to a reduction by one third.

Amin H Nasser, Saudi Aramco president and CEO, commented: “The climate change challenge has become one of the most significant challenges facing humanity in our modern world. There is not one single entity, regardless of its influence, that can confront this challenge without collaboration and cooperation from various stakeholders.

"Therefore, today’s announcement by the OGCI further reaffirms the ambition and commitment of its member companies, to be part of the global solution to addressing the climate challenge. Saudi Aramco recognises the power of collaboration and partnerships and through the OGCI’s Climate Investments, we are harnessing our collective resolve, as well as our resources, talents and technologies, to find concrete solutions and accelerate the deployment of ground-breaking technologies across various industries.”

Announced in November 2016, OGCI Climate Investments (OGCI CI) aims to accelerate the deployment of new technologies for carbon capture use and storage and methane detection and mitigation among member companies and beyond. It will also identify ways to cut the energy intensity of both transport and industry. Working in partnership with like-minded initiatives across all stakeholder groups and sectors, the OGCI CI believes its emission reduction impact can be multiplied across industries.

Nasser added: “At Saudi Aramco, we are leveraging our industry leading position to pursue a comprehensive strategy to tackle the climate challenge, to protect the environment and to achieve high levels of performance. That includes stringent compliance standards across our operations, energy efficiency measures in all end-user sectors and ramping up our R&D efforts to develop leading-edge technologies. As we seek to be aligned with the Kingdom’s efforts to achieve sustainable development, the ultimate objective of our efforts today is driven by the need to create a sustainable future for our current and future generations.”

According to a recent study published in the journal Science, which analysed emissions from nearly 9,000 actively-producing oil fields in 90 countries, Saudi Arabia's crude oil production has one of the lowest carbon emissions per barrel globally. The low carbon intensity advantage of Saudi Arabian crude oil is a result of multiple factors, including the company’s continuous implementation of best-in-class reservoir management practices, flare minimization, GHG management, and methane leak detection and repair (LDAR), said the statement.

The LDAR programme has been implemented kingdom-wide across all company operations and is now being optimized by assessing and introducing new cost-effective methane-monitoring technologies, such as thermal cameras, laser detection, and quantification sensors.

Saudi Aramco is developing and deploying cutting-edge technologies that not only reduce emissions from our operations, but also reduce the carbon footprint of our products, with a focus on higher efficiency transportation fuels and technologies, direct conversion of crude to chemicals and conversion of CO2 into useful products, it said. - TradeArabia News Service