As we look at the challenges the energy sector is facing and the global economy in general is facing, it’s clear that technology will once again play a transformative role. This panel focused on how technology is changing mindsets and processes, and also how cross-sectoral technology transfer can be very important as we look at the energy transition.

What areas are you focused on right now?

Francesca Zarri said that Eni is focused on innovation, a new central unit at its core—with over 2,000 people working on digital technologies, asset integrity, and advanced engineering to create projects for the Natural Resources and Energy Solutions divisions. The team also engages with 70+ international academic institutions to develop new ideas in areas that include biorefineries, solar, wind, and wave energy.

Bruno Chabas talked about SBM’s vision of providing safe, affordable, and sustainable energy from the ocean—including the core business of oil as well as renewables. Their perspective has three themes: lowering the cost of everything they do across all product lines; using standardization to deliver faster, and reducing environmental impact through their Emission Zero program.

Samsudin Miskon gave an overview of Petronas’ diverse development portfolio. He said CCUS is a key focus that will be rolled into designs for their next phase of gas production from fields with a high level of carbon dioxide. They also have research teams working on new electrolyzer technology especially for green hydrogen, using renewable energy for the production. They recently acquired a leader in solar energy, and moving toward technology that will link solar to energy storage with the goal of targeting remote operations. It’s also developing special low-speed wind turbines, since onshore wind speed is quite low in Malaysia. And, finally, they are investigating the creation of biofuel from algae, and sustainable construction material from treated wood waste.

Focusing on technology transfer and the way technologies are changing

Ms. Zarri talked about applying Eni’s modeling and supercomputing strengths outside of oil and gas—the company has the world’s fastest processing capability at 51.7 peak petaflops. While there are several examples, the timeliest was its recent contributions to the Exscalate4CoV project led by Italian pharmaceutical company Dompé and involving 50 partners across European academia and industry. Within a few months, over 400,000 molecules were tested for docking ability with SARS-CoV-2’s viral proteins. A pre-existing pharmaceutical was identified as particularly promising—raloxifene is now undergoing clinical trials.

Mr. Chabas said SBM is taking offshore oil and gas technology and applying it to offshore wind. He said the challenge are technical as well as logistical. But more interesting to him was the new approach they’re taking to finding a solution—they decided to open the problem up to as a “hackathon” to get comments from the world. He was amazing at the volume of quality feedback received not only the oil and gas industry, but from different industries and individuals. He said the energy transition poses many huge questions, and this kind of innovative collaboration could help answer a lot of them.

Mr. Miskon said that Petronas has committed to net zero carbon by 2050, and that CCUS will play a key role. They are currently designing the Cassowary project, which includes compression, transportation, and injection solutions—as well as technology to mineralize CO₂ for safe permanent storage. In doing so, they expect to reduce CO₂ emissions from 95 million tons to as low as 10 million.

What highlight would you like to leave our participants with?

Mr. Miskon: “I think Energy Forward is actually very promising for all of us in this industry, and we are starting with a position of strength. It’s about having close-knit collaboration and superior, focused execution with pace.”

Mr. Chabas: “We have huge challenges in front of us as an industry and as a world. And these challenges can be addressed in a different ways. First of all, by becoming better at what we’re doing and, certainly, digitalization can help. Second of all, by bringing some incremental improvement. And last but not least, really putting new products into the markets, which are going to bring energy with zero carbon emission. And this would require a lot of imagination, a lot of collaboration, and a lot of different ways of working.”

Ms. Zarri: “I really believe that one of the main challenges is to let our great innovation capital be understood and appreciated by you all, because only by concretely and astutely applying innovation will we be able to redefine our trajectory and point our development model towards new frontiers. And the oil and gas industry will be the key.”