World Petroleum Congress Kicks off in Madrid

The 19th World Petroleum Congress ( WPC) kicked off in Madrid on Sunday night, with the future of the sector amid soaring oil prices high on the agenda.

The key players of the sector will meet at this major event in order to analyze the challenges, the trends and the different working areas regarding the future of the oil industry, the Spanish organizers said in a press release ahead of the meeting.

It was the biggest gathering of leaders from the world oil industry in every three years, which was opened with a private dinner and set to start wide-ranging discussions on Monday.

Some 4,000 delegates, including policy makers and prominent executives from oil companies, were expected to attend the congress, dubbed as the Olympics of the oil and gas industry.

This year, the congress was held days after the international oil prices exceeded 140 U.S. dollars per barrel and there was little sign of easing in the near future.

Hopes were high that the congress could help solve the current oil price crisis after a global summit on the issue in Saudi Arabia's Red Sea city of Jeddah one week ago failed to produce any concrete measures.

Among the participants are Chakib Khelil, president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the oil cartel's Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency Nobuo Tanaka, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs and several ministers of state.

They will be joined by representatives of top oil companies, including ExxonMobil of the United States, BP and Shell of Britain, Rosneft of Russia, Total of France and CNOOC of China.

But analysts said the congress would continue to be clouded by quarrels between oil producers and consumers as in the Jeddah summit, where consumer countries blamed high oil prices on a lack of supplies, while producers attacked market speculation and the weak U.S. dollar.

The organizers tended to define the congress as a meeting of the professionals in the oil industry, rather than to talk about the oil prices, which were largely out of their control.

Under the motto "A world in transition: delivering energy for sustainable growth", the congress was designed to be focused on the challenge of sustainability for the sector.

A few of the topics to be addressed during the five-day congress include deliverability challenges, finding, accessing and reporting reserves, the industry's water usage, biofuels and motor fuel quality, securing European gas supply, geopolitics, the environmental footprint of the industry, social responsibility, societal expectations and the role of young people.

The challenge for the industry in a world in transition is to ensure continuous, affordable and reliable supply, meeting society 's expectations in a sustainable, transparent, ethical and environmentally sound manner, the WPC said.

Source: CRIEnglish