First IPTC in Saudi Arabia Attracts Top Executives, Breaks Attendance Record
Authors: Donnelly John , Jacobs Trent , Whitfield Stephen 
Published: February 2020

2020 IPTC conference review

The 12th International Petroleum Technology Conference, held 13–15 January in Dhahran, was the largest in its history with more than 18,000 attendees. It marked the first international multidisciplinary, intersociety oil and gas conference and exhibition to be held in Saudi Arabi and featured some of the globe’s top oil and gas executives, including the energy ministers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Saudi Aramco’s president and CEO, and the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Total, Petronas, and Woodside.

Below are highlights from some of the plenary, panel, and technical sessions that took place during the 3-day event.

Welcoming a New Energy Era

The conference opened with a distinguished panel offering its outlook for oil and gas markets in the next year and the next decade.

“This is the first interdisciplinary oil and gas conference to be held in Saudi Arabia,” said Mahmoud M. Abdulbaqi, chairman of the board of ARGAS and chairman of the IPTC Board of Directors. The conference was hosted by Saudi Aramco. The opening panel included Abdulbaqi; Mohammed Y. Al-Qahtani, senior vice president, upstream, Saudi Aramco; Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of the board, Saudi Aramco; and Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud, minister of energy, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

“These are exiting times for the Kingdom,” al-Qahtani said, as both Saudi Aramco and the oil and gas industry at large face a new decade of growing demand but with a need to lighten the industry’s carbon footprint. Saudi Aramco raised a record $29.4 billion in its recent IPO.

Al-Rumayyan said the oil and gas industry thinks in terms of decades, which runs up against the notion that the “energy transition” will occur “from a definitive point A to a definitive point B” and will take place at the same time in the same way everywhere. Instead, he offered what he called the “pragmatic narrative” of a transition happening over decades and that there “will be many energy transitions” at different speeds.

The more narrow narrative is having negative consequences for the industry, he added, because it is influencing some banks to back away from funding oil and gas projects. This lack of investment eventually will lead to a supply shortage that could cause oil price spikes in the near future, he said.

He acknowledged the need of the industry to “lighten the carbon footprint” through technology and innovation, but it must continue to meet the world’s energy needs. The industry must never forget its role to responsibly supply energy required to power the world and sustain economies, he said. If the industry “offers real solutions with real energy to meet real needs” it will last well into the future, he added.

Saudi Energy Minister Al-Saud noted the historically important role that Saudi Arabia has played since the discovery of oil about 80 years ago. The global economic growth of the past half century, which paved the way for transformative development and lifted many out of poverty, would not have taken place without the stability of oil supply from Saudi Arabia.