Chevron notes cooperation of Australian government

A Chevron Corp. executive vice-president for upstream and gas, told a meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation members that Asian governments need to promote policies to expand and diversity energy resources, especially natural gas.

Speaking at the APEC meeting in Singapore on Nov. 12, Kirkland cited Australia as a good example.

In September, Chevron and partners agreed to proceed with the $40 billion Gorgon LNG and upstream project off Australia.

“Gorgon will supply natural gas into the Asia-Pacific region as well as Australia domestically—with half the carbon footprint of coal,” Kirkland said. “Gas from Gorgon will significantly help expand and diversity the Asia-Pacific region’s energy supplies.”

Australia also worked with Chevron to support a carbon capture and sequestration component of Gorgon, Kirkland noted.

“Australia got it right with natural gas, a resource whose time has come,” he said.

He credits Australia's state and federal government officials with aggressively fostering policies and a political environment providing stable legal frameworks, predictable fiscal and tax regimes, and contact sanctity.

Oil companies protect Middle Eastern coral reefs

Various oil companies are taking an interest in research projects to advance the conservation, management, and sustainable use of coral reefs in the Middle East. Coral reefs, home to fish and other marine animals, have a very slow growth rate. In previous decades, researchers have blamed the oil industry for damaging coral reefs.

Saudi Aramco installed 36 moored buoys around the coral-reef islands of Jana, Karan, and Kuran. The oil company worked with Saudi Arabia’s Environmental Protection Department to provide fishing boats and recreational-dive vessels with an alternative to dropping anchors in the Red Sea.

Boaters hook their lines to the buoy pickup line—preventing coral colonies from being damaged by anchors and their steel chains.

In the southern Arabian Gulf off Abu Dhabi and eastern Qatar, Dolphin Energy Ltd. contributed $500,000 to a coral study coordinated by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Total SA and Occidental Petroleum Corp. helped finance that study, “Coral Reef Investigation in Abu Dhabi and Eastern Qatar.”

Total owns 39.62% interest in Yeman LNG project. During project planning, the stakeholders hired a French consultancy, Creocean, whose marine environmental researchers identified 79 species of coral, of which some are 400 years old. Consequently, Yemen LNG redesigned part of its site and shoreline work in the port of Balhaf on the Gulf of Aden in southern Yemen to protect the coral.