John Hoffmeister, current President of Shell Oil in the USA, was brave or unwise enough to visit the Nicholas School at Duke as part of a 50 City Tour of the USA. He described presentation he made as a part of Shell's campaign to "gain some credibility" for an industry that lacks the confidence of the public or of policy makers. What his audience took from the presentation, however, will certainly be mixed feelings on the stance of this most iconic of US big oil producers.
On the positive side, Hoffmeister displayed a keen awareness of the need for Shell to maintain a "social licence to operate", and provided a number of examples of improving the performance of Shell production sites in terms of environmental management (for instance adopting drilling platform technology from ocean rigs to terrestrial sites to reduce the footprint of the extraction), and new production techniques, including novel options for in situ extraction of oil shales. The engineer in me was cheered and interested at the thought of heating rock to 700 degrees to allow the extraction of oil contained within, although the environmentalist in me shudders at the prospect of needing to rely upon the inefficient and low quality oil shales.
Hoffmeister also demonstrated a significant level of investment by Shell in new energy technologies, which is welcome news. Shell is looking at new solar cell construction using (I think), doped copper-indium cells which reduce both weight and production costs from the conventional silicon models. Shell is invested in wind power, in coal gasification (more on this later), and in bioenergy, particularly cellulosic based technologies relying on enzymatic digestion of waste plant matter. They're running trials of ethanol fuel stations in Chicago, and seem excited about the prospect of the hydrogen economy, having just opened the first hydrogen refuelling station in the US on the outskirts of Washington DC.
If there were a number of positive aspects to Hoffmeister's talk, there were also as least as many things to worry about. He didn't start on the greatest note - the first few minutes of his talk were devoted to a reflection on how unfortunate it is that public policy prevents Shell from accessing the "vast" oil reserves in the Arctic territories, offshore banks and islands. In other words, move over National Parks and protected areas, we wish to mine.
More insidious, however, was the generic: "our technology will save us" approach that underlay much of Hoffmeister's projections and reasoning. Apart from his bold assertion that "Shell does not accept the idea of peak oil" which can only be taken as lip service to an outdated philosophy which the company cannot possibly be adopting as their ongoing operating assumption (given that the majority of the ideas Hoffmeister mentioned are exactly those expected under a peak oil condition - the extraction of oil from increasingly poor reserves, going back to "mined out" areas, diversifying the energy economy of the USA); Hoffmeister made a number of assertions.
Firstly, he is keen to increase the efficiency of energy use in the US. All well and good, however upon further questioning, he revealed that Shell is not envisaging a reduction in total power use - simply a "more bang for our buck" approach. This is a stance consistent with Shell's need to make a profit, but inconsistent with environmental objectives. I would pause to remind readers that the rate of production of carbon dioxide emissions has a negligible effect on the impact of global warming, so merely slowing down production is not an acceptable long term strategy.
Secondly, Hoffmeister expressed considerable enthusiasm about coal gasification plants. Again, these are generally a good thing, much cleaner than regular coal plants, but essentially not a greenhouse friendly solution unless coupled to carbon sequestration projects. And although Hoffmeister could demonstrate some progress in the field of sequestration, this technology essentially remains unproven, and, as he stated, by undertaking geosequestration we are undertaking something with consequences that we cannot forsee and that may not become apparent for several hundred years.
Finally, the hydrogen economy. While I love the idea, I am very sick of people touting this as pollution free technology. Upon further questioning, Hoffmeister admitted that electrolysis of water would need electricity, and that he sees that as being coupled to the aforementioned coal gasification plants.
No solutions for global warming here folks!
While it was pleasing to see that Shell has started to consider energy options beyond oil, has recognised that it has an image problem requiring urgent review, and is investing in good things, the underlying theme was of business as usual: a company pursuing profit and merely rolling with the punches of a changing energy regime. I don't expect to see Shell taking the lead in solving the global energy crisis unless their thinking and ethical stance takes another few leaps forward.
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