What does it mean to co-chair a major geoscience energy conference? That is what I asked Max Brouwers in a call yesterday when we spoke about the AAPG ICE Conference in Madrid last week.
“One of the best aspects of my role as a co-chair is to help shape the theme of the conference and being able to approach potential contributors or moderators for panel discussions. It really helps grow your network and also allowed me to get in touch with people I did not speak to for a while”, says Max, who works for Getech in the Netherlands in the energy transition space. Previous to that, he worked for Shell for 25 years in a variety of geoscience and business development roles.
“I should say that convincing people to participate in a panel discussion is sometimes a little easier than asking them to write a four-page extended abstract!”, adds Max.
A difficult message
“Politicians have a hard time saying that the energy trilemma is difficult”, said Josu Jon Imaz, CEO of Repsol during the opening address. “I found it interesting to hear these words”, says Max. “In the many conversations I had during the event last week, this theme of more realism and pragmatism is what percolated through very often. Maybe the industry is more rapidly waking up to that than the people in politics are.”
“The other thing I remember from the opening address are the words from Atul Arya from S&P Global: “We are at peak oil, peak gas, peak coal and peak greenhouse gas emissions. We are still far removed from where we want to be”, he said. “Yes, the technology is there to do something about this”, added Jarand Rystad from Rystad Energy. “Whether we want it or not, the space oil and gas still fill in the affordable energy mix is here to stay for a while”, Max concludes.
Natural hydrogen
“I must admit that I didn’t go to many technical talks, as I was quite occupied with the panel discussions and other meetings on the side”, continues Max, “but I managed to go to the natural hydrogen talks and these were fascinating. “It is exploration back to basics. OK, let’s face it, it may be a 1% chance it’s going to work, but the element of treasure hunting is fascinating and is much more exciting than considering whether a seismic amplitude response next to an existing gas field is worth drilling into. And let’s face it, initially many people did not believe in the future of internet either!”
“It’s all a little incremental”
“The large breakthrough when it comes to digitalization is yet to happen in my view”, says Max when we come to talk about the presentations he managed to capture on this topic. “What I’ve seen is about small steps forward, but I’m eager for the moment to arrive when the first prospect is going to be drilled purely based on AI.”
Max is convinced that moment will happen though. “Yes, it is more difficult than many of the AI applications already out there, because of the uncertainty related to the subsurface, but I think that with more and more model training we will arrive at this point in the near future. I spoke to several exploration directors at the conference who said that this is definitely on their radar”, he added. Maybe the theme of next year’s event?
