VIDEO: Carbon capture a key to supporting the energy transition

Fahad Al-Dhubaib, senior vice president of Strategy and Market Analysis

MENA Climate Week 2023: Unlocking CCUS Potential

At Aramco, the journey to decarbonization started a while back.

In the 1970s, we used to flare a lot of our gas, and we built the Master Gas System and put it through a network of pipelines, which has helped us capture all of that gas, and this gave birth to the petrochemical industry within the Kingdom.

We're living it again now.

Given our history in capturing gas and CO₂, managing a network of pipelines, and our knowledge of the geology and aquifers that can be leveraged, in 2022, we announced the biggest carbon capture hub, Jubail Hub.

The name of the game in hubs is scale and infrastructure.

What we're building in phase one is around 9 million tonnes per annum (capture capacity).

Part of it will be used by Aramco to decarbonize, but the remaining parts will be used by other industries to decarbonize as well.

Capturing the CO₂ is the first part,  but we believe the utilization of CO₂ is another wave of applications and revenue streams that will help these hubs as well.

We can inject CO₂ in concrete, which will not impact the durability and will shorten the time for the concrete to cure substantially.

There are many other research areas, such as CO₂ to polymers and chemicals.

You need everyone on the table sitting, and discussing, and sharing their efforts.

The energy system is a huge system, and you cannot understand it and decarbonize it without bringing all of the parties involved to better understand what's working and what's not, what's the economics, what are the limits of science and technology and research, what are the right breakthrough moments and time horizons for us to jump on one technology versus the other.