All missives from OPTIMIZE24

With OPTIMIZE24, organised by AspenTech, drawing to a close last week, the Oilholic marked a fascinating and engaging week with a number of pieces for Forbes as well as daily blog posts. 

Here are the Forbes pieces:

• AspenTech ‘Uniquely Positioned’ As An Optimization Enabler For Global Industries, Says CEO, April 30, 2024.
• Net Zero Goals Intertwine With A Viable Circular Economy, Says Sustainability Tech Expert, May 6, 2024.

And here are all the blog entries for OPTIMIZE24:

• 'Crude' carnage, a crazy April & arriving in H-Town, April 29, 2024.
• Kick-off at OPTIMIZE24 & delving into 'bio-optimization', April 30, 2024.
• 'Partnering for the future' at OPTIMIZE24, May 1, 2024. 

That's a wrap. More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2024.

'Partnering for the future' at OPTIMIZE24

The second and final day of the main conference program at OPTIMIZE24 has now concluded. It started with an early morning primer on the energy transition challenge from geologist, documentary filmmaker and founder of the Switch Energy Alliance Scott Tinker. 

This set attendees up for an insightful panel discussion on navigating net zero hosted by AspenTech's Chief Product & Sustainability Officer Rasha Hasaneen. She was joined by fellow panellists Andre Argenton, Chief Sustainability Officer at Dow, Suresh Kotha, Chief Information Officer at SMUD,  Darryl Willis, Corporate Vice President, Energy & Resources Industry at Microsoft, Zhanna Golodryga, Executive Vice President, Emerging Energy and Sustainability at Phillips 66, Aqil Jamal, Chief Technologist, Carbon Management Research Division at Aramco, and Mike Train, Chief Sustainability Officer at Emerson. 

The hour-long discussion that followed dwelt on how digitization and collaboration in the energy and industrial complex remain crucial to navigating net zero challenges and achieving a just energy transition by tackling the energy trilemma (of sustainability, security and affordability). 

Summing up, Hasaneen noted that existing digitalization tools may hold many of the answers, while innovations - like artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing - may enable a more consistent adoption across both traditional and emerging energy sectors. 

Ultimately, as the AspenTech sustainability head noted: "Technologies do exist to make the world greener and cleaner, willpower and collaboration is what's needed." Or in other words - all parties need to "partner for the future."

Elsewhere, over the course of the day, this blogger heard interesting sessions touching on cybersecurity best practices for operational technology, how AspenTech solutions are being deployed for automating well production, flaring and downtime reduction in the Permian basin, performance engineering for petrochemicals and the company's solutions for supporting the wider hydrogen industry. 

Away from it all, the Oilholic was delighted to host thought leadership videos for AspenTech at OPTIMIZE24 with several of the company's key movers and shakers including Hasaneen (pictured above). The software company's strategic partners and clients also participated in the exercise.

They included senior executives from EY, Accenture, Wood, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Westlake, TenneT and SMUD. The videos will be posted soon on AspenTech's and their partners' commercial and social channels. So watch this space folks!

And finally, the Oilholic shares with you a glimpse of the event's really cool "smart" lanyard. How so? Well the mini device attached to the strap, carried yours truly's event sessions preferences, and flashed a reminder each time they were due to start. Not only that, touching / syncing it with a fellow attendee's lanyard exchanged mutual contact details! All very, very handy and innovative! And that alas is it for the latest edition of OPTIMIZE. 

All that remains is to thank the wonderful Team AspenTech for putting on a fabulous and insightful event in Houston, and for their warm hospitality. Here's to the next installment in the very near future. More musings to follow soon after the flight home to London. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo I: 'Navigating net zero' panel at AspenTech's OPTIMIZE24 on May 1, 2024 in Houston, Texas, US. © Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo II: Gaurav Sharma recording an AspenTech thought leadership video with Rasha Hasaneen, the company's Chief Product & Sustainability Officer on May 1, 2024. © Pete Yagmin /AspenTech 2024. Photo III: OPTIMIZE24's smart lanyard. © Gaurav Sharma 2024.

Kick-off at OPTIMIZE24 & delving into 'bio-optimization'

The Oilholic has just concluded his first insightful day at OPTIMIZE24, the thought leadership event for specialist industrial software provider AspenTech. 

The first day of the event's main program saw  attendees from over 50 countries, 20 industries and 100 AspenTech partners who included a veritable who's-who of the energy, manufacturing and industrial complex such as Aramco, Eni, Dow, ExxoMobil, Tennet, Chevron, YPF, OMV and Sabic to name a few. 

Leading technology companies, seen regularly at energy events these days, were also in town including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft who partner on the data side with AspenTech. 

Proceedings were kicked-off by AspenTech CEO Antonio Pietri who summed up the company's ambitions of being a dependable business partner for those looking to improve throughput, firm up their bottomline, improve margins and lower their carbon footprint - all of which are connected. 

Pietri also expressed his enthusiasm for industrial AI as a tool for achieving energy efficiencies, albeit with "guardrails" in place and via a pragmatic approach, in tandem with IIoT and predictive analytics. Ahead of his keynote, the AspenTech also boss kindly spared the time to sit down with the Oilhoic once again, as he has kindly done several times in the past. The resulting and wide-ranging Forbes interview is published here. 

Pietri's keynote set the tone for the sessions that followed. This blogger chose to listen in to how energy majors were attempting to streamline exploration and production, reduce capex and opex, improve health and safety, advance operational excellence and enable the energy transition. 

Many at the venue were happily prepared to give the Oilholic demos and details of upstream and downstream pilot projects to this effect, as well as their existing deployments. 

One key and very interesting theme that made this blogger think was the ongoing re-tuning of the refining complex, which is seeing many European refiners, who once deployed AspenTech solutions to improve efficiencies for the traditional cracking of hydrocarbons, turn to the company's bespoke digital solutions and deploy them produce sustainable bio-fuels. If its a buzzword you seek dear readers - then call it 'bio-optimization'.

Taking in all of its clients global refining optimisation and bio-fuels initiatives, AspenTech claims to have cut 16MT of CO2 emissions in step with $59 billion worth of improved profitability! And on that mammoth refined, or shall we say bio-refined note, its time to bid goodbye for now. We're only just getting started here, so more to follow tomorrow. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo I: OPTIMIZE24 logo. Photo II: Antonio Pietri, CEO of AspenTech, speaks at OPTIMIZE24, his company's thought leadership conference in Houston, Texas, US on April 30, 2024. © Gaurav Sharma 2024.

'Crude' carnage, a crazy April & arriving in H-Town

The crazy trading month of April is drawing to a close and the Oilholic is writing this missive on a sunny Houston afternoon, having arrived in H-town for industrial software firm AspenTech's thought leadership event - OPTIMIZE24. More on that later, and over the next couple of days. 

But first, let's sum up April's 'crude' carnage. The Brent front-month contract has broken its $85 per barrel support level. This wasn't looking likely at the start of the month when prices were lurking well above the level and even overshot to $92 in the wake of the Iran-Israel skirmish. Yet, as the second month of the second quarter of the oil trading year nears its conclusion, the price is barely holding above $83. Why? Well in this blogger's humble opinion that's certainly not because the risk has gone away. The residual risk still persists. 

However, with the Iran-Israel tensions having eased and oil sliding from $90+ highs, as trading stumbles into May with (thankfully) no regional damage to energy infrastructure - concerns over demand have resurfaced in a market struggling for direction. On one hand there are still lingering doubts about the performance of China's economy (yes there are) and the general direction of travel for the global economy, while on the other is an overriding sentiment that OPEC will hold firm on its price supportive actions. It what's your truly told Reuters the other day.  

Yes, Beijing is indeed importing record amounts of crude oil. But its importation uptick is nothing like it was pre-Covid. And quite a few of the barrels it is importing are being used to boost its strategic reserves. Furthermore, you can count an economy to have motored on in any given fiscal year if its data was consistently pointing to an upswing in economic sentiment, which it clearly isn't in China's case. Hence the doubts. 

As for OPEC, this blogger keeps hearing suggestions from some that the producers' group has lost control of the crude market. This is bonkers. In fact, the Oilholic doubts OPEC is anywhere even remotely near losing control. 

It appears to be actively positioning for a Brent price that is at least 15-20% higher than pre-Covid levels of around $75, seen at the start of January 2020. That'd be around a $80-$90 - a level that's not too high for buyers, not too low for it and well short of three-figures. It's why a market seeking direction is witnessing the current oscillation, while OPEC is left with plenty of spare capacity.

Away from crude chatter, and on to the happy matter of OPTIMIZE24, an event where the great and the good of the technical and engineering side of energy, industrial, chemical and manufacturing worlds are gathering this week at the behest of AspenTech. This blogger looks forward examining, discussing and learning about the challenges and solutions for the approaching low carbon horizon, and of course joining the dots between improved throughput and meeting emissions targets. 

The event's slogan "Partnering for the future" has a nice ring to it. Let's see how it sings over the next couple of days. More from H-Town soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo I: View of  George R. Brown Convention Center and Discovery Green, Downtown Houston, Texas, US, on Apr 29, 2024. Photo II: Gaurav Sharma at AspenTech's OPTIMIZE24 thought leadership conference, Houston, Texas, US., Apr 2024. © Gaurav Sharma 2024.