13-01-01 There is a serious disconnection between the oil industry and society today, according to Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Petroleum vice-chairman and managing director. Ambani said the pressure-points were in several areas -- climate concern, convergence and even related to cyber-issues.
In a hard hitting address on the future of green refining he said: "Environmentalists would like to see the demise of the petroleum industry and green evangelists would like to replace petrol with hydrogen fuel cells. However, the truth is that these technologies will take at least 20 more years to mature."
"About 13 bn barrels of oil are today being produced every year to power roughly 700 mm vehicles. The number of vehicles is expected to double in the next five years. The stark reality is that oil will continue to be the backbone fuel and carbon emissions will continue to rise," Ambani added. "The developed world can never meet the commitments of noxious gas reductions by 2010 agreed to in the Kyoto protocol," he said.
Commenting on issues related to convergence, Ambani said there is currently a union of the refining, petrochemical and power generation businesses. The RPL Jamnagar refinery is built on this intersection, he said.
In the petroleum marketing arena, he pointed out to the convergence of food and fuel. Retailers are making inroads into petrol and oil is no longer a commodity. More co-branded partnerships between food and petroleum retailing will emerge, he predicted. We are also moving towards convergence of various kinds of energy trading. This activity was so far compartmentalised and energy, liquid fuels and gas were being traded separately. But the future is total energy service. Electronic trading is a radical change which will derail traditional exchanges, he said.

Future convergence will be between biotechnology and the oil industry. This technology has been so far limited to oil spills where oil chewing micro organisms are used to chew up the oil. But this can extend to bio-diesel or algae that could turn sunlight into hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel. Hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas which is currently non-renewable.
The final pressure-point, according to Ambani, is Information Technology, which is a challenge on the supply side as well as the demand side, he said. Fuel hungry computers will consume about 500 bn kWh of energy per annum. He said Indian companies should move from words to action on the issue of environmental responsibility.
The chairman of Indian Oil, M.A. Pathan also announced the institution of a Petrotech chair at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, for research into environmentally friendly petroleum technology. Lifetime achievement awards were also presented to two doyens of the energy industry -- Balwant Singh Negi, a doyen geophysicist and chairman of ONGC from 1970 to 73 the second award was presented to reputed scientist S. Vardarajan, who is a chemist and scientist and was the chairman of IPCL and EIL in the 1980s.