WGC 2021 Topics

This session will examine the advances in the gas distribution system with the view of system integrity as a platform of Innovation ecosystem for the sustainable future.

Environmental concerns are affecting all areas of the natural gas value chain including storage. This session will focus on both reducing the environmental impacts of storage and the large role of storage in the in advancing the evolving sustainable energy future.
– Methane Emission and Reductions
– Environmental Assessments of Storage
– Opportunities for Energy Storage in a reduced carbon electric system
– Seasonal Energy Storage
– Storage of unconventional gases

Good practices of HSSE is gaining public acceptance of gas development and delivery. This session will discuss good practices in HSSE and innovative practices to strengthen public acceptance of gas development and delivery.

This session will explore various gas utilization toward a sustainable and low carbon world, including the following topics:
– Natural gas for efficient & sustainable power production
– High efficiency solutions/technologies for industrial & commercial appliances
– How to decarbonize industrial or commercial appliances with natural gas
– New potential growth of innovative uses of NG & RNG
– Quality of NG & RNG into grids: Impacts of natural gas quality and RNG on usages

This session will explore sustainable transportation powered by gas, including the following topics:
– Heavy Horsepower Engines: Technologies, applications, success stories
– Refuelling Technology CNG and LNG
– Marine Applications: Bunkering; inland waterways; integration with land applications; challenges
– Fuel pricing policies and the role of government
– Fiscal aspects of gas mobility
– Natural Gas/hydrogen blends

Circular economy is an economic model aimed at optimizing consumption of finite sources and minimizing waste, and can be one of the solutions towards a sustainable future. This session will provide insights into the concept, its benefits and its implementation practices in gas business.

Gas and renewables have a complementing role towards a low carbon emission future. This session will discuss the role of renewables and gas in a decarbonized energy system.

This session will address data and methods for accounting for greenhouse gas emission from LNG value chain elements and innovations in emission measurements as well as reporting requirements as the worldwide LNG industry works toward reducing its contribution to world greenhouse gas emissions.

This session will discuss about the application of circular economy concept to improve environmental performance. Using this concept, case studies of interest may include, but not limited to:
1. Water and waste management
2. Emissions reduction
3. Soil and groundwater management
4. Decomissioning – rehabilitation

Gas has contributed as a partner in tackling clean air in big cities. This session will showcase how big cities find solutions for clean air including the following:
– How to tackle communication challenges, including coalition building, winning the argument, engaging stakeholders and talking about innovation
– How is gas playing a role as part of the solution?

This session provides successful examples where gas is the key success factor in energy transition despite high capital expenditures. It focusses on the pathway from emission intense fuels like coal or oil to natural gas to lower emissions based on efficient solutions and technologies that are already available now. The session will illustrate the role played by natural gas to significantly reduce emissions in the power generation, heating, transport sectors, to improve the air.

This session will explore specific technology and innovation examples and case studies for the following topics of gas utilization:
– Natural gas for efficient & sustainable power production
– High efficiency solutions/technologies for industrial & commercial appliances
– New potential growth of innovative uses of NG & RNG
– Quality of NG & RNG into grids: Impacts of Natural gas quality and RNG on usages

Complementary roles of natural gas and renewables can lead towards a low CO2 emission future. This session will discuss about innovation of gas and renewables, transformation of natural gas, and alternative renewable sources such as biogas and hydrogen in existing gas infrastructure.

This session will present new and efficient developments, which are reducing emissions e.g. by heat integration, start-up optimization, use of artificial intelligence, smart process control etc.

This session will explore specific technology and innovation examples and case studies for the following topics of gas transportation:
– Heavy Horsepower Engines: Technologies, applications, success stories
– Refuelling Technology CNG and LNG
– Marine Applications: Bunkering, inland waterways; integration with land applications; challenges
– Fuel pricing policies and the role of government
– Natural Gas/hydrogen blends

This session will explore tools and innovations to become greener and greener ensuring at the same time a safe and a reliable introduction of renewable gases and the minimization of emissions.

In this session, the specific cases of technologies and innovation which have been adopted in the gas industry and shown a potential role overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic will be categorized and discussed in terms of sustainability aspects. This session is also exploring the direction of the development of the technologies and innovation of gas industry for the post COVID-19 era.

This session will explore the opportunities of digitalization and new effective application of technologies in E&P to maximize the natural gas project value

This session will explore how gas distribution grids with Information & Communication Technology can be used to better meet the needs of customers and to promote decentralized and integrated local energy markets.

This session will focus on the current assessment of reserves/investments to satisfy the future energy demand.

This session will examine how TSOs can increase the flexibility, resilience and affordability of energy systems, through sector coupling and market integrations.

This session will provide an insight on projected or existing projects thought to reach new customers by break bulk and road/rail transport of LNG:
a) Economics justifying the investment
b) Showcase of how they can help the economic development of remote areas

This session will focus on advances in underground gas storage safety. It will explore several aspects of safety including; changes to codes and standards and the drivers of these changes; risk analysis and integrity management programs and techniques, and operational and procedures safety changes. Also explored will be design and construction issues that affect safe storage systems and ongoing operations.

This session will provide best practice and case studies for enabling use of the existing natural gas distribution network to transport hydrogen safely at the lowest cost within the shortest timescales.

This session will focus on cutting-edge gas production stimulation technologies and methods of gas recovery improvement (Enhanced Gas Recovery).

This session will explore the state of the art E&P technologies for natural gas.

This session will present new LNG carrier and short-based technologies for transportation and storage of LNG that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cargoes, prime mover operation and cargo loading and unloading.

This session will be composed of discussing the new distribution field services.

Storage design and operation has always been a source of innovation and new technology. This session will explore some of the current and emerging technology in the inspection of wells and reservoirs, design and modeling, testing, storage station operations, and storage of unconventional gases.
This session will look at:
– Inspection of wells, reservoirs and caverns
– Design Innovations
– Reservoir Modeling
– Storage Compression and Dehydration Innovations

This session will explore the following key topics:
– Can new pipeline deployment technology speed up the access to new markets?
– Can you reduce the end user cost of gas by introducing digitalization

Storage has been a fundamental part of the natural gas value chain for decades. This provides a wide range of technical challenges not only from aging reservoirs and wells but also from current industry changes that can impact storage. This session will address some of those challenges including issues around aging infrastructure and new challenges around renewable natural gases and hydrogen in the natural gas grids, and other emerging technical and operational challenges to storage operations.
This session will look at:
– Aging of reservoirs and wells
– Renewable Gases, their growth and impact on new and existing storages
– Hydrogen and storage
– Storage in non-traditional geologies

This session will showcase the new distribution products.

This session will examine the evolution of gas and LNG contracts to understand which clauses changed over the past years, providing the reason for the changes and whether those changes are sustainable over time.

This session will focus on the role of gas in the future source of world energy. Key factors for the evolution of gas demand in the world and the development of new sources of supply will be explored.

During the last 15 years there has been a global trend towards market-based pricing for natural gas. However, regulated price formation mechanism still has an important market share. This session will focus on developments in price formation patterns, both on global and regional levels, diversity of modes of price origination and their evolution.

This session will explore the commercial innovation in contracting to capture new demand.
– How do new indices and destination flexibility offer more value to buyers?
– Will CNG and LNG for land and marine transportation play pivotal roles as solutions to increase gas demand?
– Small scale solutions for penetrating niche and untapped markets will cover how LNG barge/ISO tanks/gas to power/bulk breaking play a role in tapping into new markets.

Storage operations around the world face widely different market conditions. This session will present the current world storage capacities, explore market differences, and discuss unrecognized values of storage. It will also look at new market opportunities for energy storage, whether through storage of new gases or the storage as a backbone to support renewable electricity production.
– Future role of Underground Storage
– Market opportunities and barriers in different geographical areas
– Seasonal Markets, Demand Based Markets
– Current Storage Statistics

This session will look at how much the scenarios of gas market development depend on ecology-related assumptions. This session will analyze that the implementation of the Paris Agreement will increase natural gas consumption in the mid-term and long-term.

The spread of the deadly COVID-19 has impacted the gas industry and markets as well as other industries.
In this session, the impacts will be categorized and discussed in terms of sustainability aspects.
This session is also exploring the technical, social, economic aspects of the impacts and the post COVID-19 outlook of gas industry and markets.

This session will review how TSOs are creating and maintaining their social licence with stakeholders through proactive engagement for general interest and preservation of climate and biodiversity.

This session will address which emerging gas technologies will enable a systemic solution that support a low carbon energy system that includes heat, power, and mobility. This includes but is not limited to technologies such as Hydrogen (blue and green), Biogas, Power to Gas, LNG. Participants will share how these technologies should couple with low carbon electrical systems to achieve a resilient and economically viable energy system. Finally, the panel will highlight the key challenges facing adoption of these technologies sharing the regulatory, policy, and financial developments from their geographic regions, including suggested solutions to overcome these barriers.

As the penetration of renewable electricity increases, the instability of the power grid increases and thus challenges for the local energy system increase. These can be met by the gas system, as fuel cells, hybrid heating, hybrid industrial high temperature systems, GHP, and micro-CHP generate options for smart integrated energy networks. The best mixture of gas and electricity will constitute constructs mutually complementary system. The session will focus on how gas can be used to create smarter grids, and combined with virtual power plant (VPP) gas utilization is an instrument for improving reliability and resilience.

This session will address major technological innovations that are currently being deployed or are targeted for deployment across the LNG value chain, which represent breakthroughs in expanding the market for LNG, reduce costs of energy delivered in the form of LNG, and increase the safety and sustainability of the LNG system designs and operations. Innovations covered will comprise of technologies serving the traditional LNG value chain and new market applications including small scale LNG, remote natural gas development, transportation markets including land vehicles and marine vessels, and other novel applications.

New technologies and products that will enable industry to leverage big data to better engage consumers and manage our gas systems. This session includes the following:
– Solutions for GHG emission reductions in household gas installations
– Use of blockchain for residential consumers

This session aims to give an overview of how TSOs are creating value for stakeholders by driving innovation through digitalization and the implementation of best practice management systems.

This session will cover:
– New technologies and products that will enable industry to leverage big data to better engage consumers and manage our gas systems
– Use of blockchain for residential consumers.
– Solutions for GHG emission reductions in household gas installations.

Digital transformation has accelerated in the gas industry. Digitalization offers multiple benefits in E&P areas: uncovering new resources, enhancing the mining efficiencies, and dramatic cost saving. Blockchain is providing emerging opportunities to revolutionize trading and payment systems. Leveraging and deploying emerging digital technologies into the O&M of gas infrastructure realize breakthrough improvements in evaluating the integrity and safety, effective operation, and reducing the cost. In end-use sectors, intelligent and smart systems and a variety of new services with digital technology is being provided to customers. This session will address the latest digital transformation in the gas industry.

This session will address new technologies and technological approaches for introducing renewable natural gases (RNG) and power-to-gas feedstocks into traditional transport and end use natural gas systems, equipment, and appliances. Presentations will cover technological innovations, optimization of operating practices, technical and operational challenges, and beneficial outcomes of these mixed gas approaches to gaseous fuel supply.

This session will focus on applications and tools to enhance optimizations in transmission systems.

As power becomes cleaner around the world, gas industry is facing the challenge to re-shape its classical product: natural gas. It could be blended with biogas, hydrogen or syngas. Hydrogen from renewable source or produced from methane might turn into a welcomed option to lower emissions in cities or in entire sectors like transportation. Is there a synergy between these different types of gases or will the amount of greener gases remain insignificant? This session will throw a light on different options, first experiences and forecasts for different markets.

Around the world, gas companies and associations are developing Energy Visions – long term views on how the energy markets can develop, and what the role of gas is in it. These Energy Visions make sure our sector stays part of the important conversation on a sustainable energy vision. This session seeks to share the best practices and lessons learned on how to position effectively & successfully this energy vision, with successful examples from other industry sectors.

The world is changing fast, and so is the gas sector. New business models are disrupting our business. These disruptive business models go hand in hand with new approaches to marketing. This session will analyze marketing for the gas industry with a specific focus on positioning disruptive business models.

This session will be composed of:
– Cases where the supply of natural gas has facilitated economic development
– Examples of gas-based technology for solutions to the lack of energy access
– Examples where gas has facilitated renewable energy to provide reliable energy supply in developing or remote area

This session aims to provide examples of energy policies that promote the natural gas as an important part of the energy future, along the whole value chain, either at global or national level, while taking into consideration the current and new climate agreements and commitments, including:
– Environmental protection
– Health protection including indoor/outdoor air quality
– Decarbonization of energy – cost, speed, GHG emission reduction effectiveness
– HG emission reduction to address climate change
– Security of energy supply and trade
– Provision of natural gas for energy access

This session will define:
– The changing business & market environments for gas players
– The strategies which gas players have taken in the changing business & market environments
– In what direction are gas players’ strategies proceeding with

Price regulation by the governments significantly affects attractiveness of gas industry for investments both domestic and external. This session will explore domestic price regulation patterns, impediments for the market reforms, affects of government intervention on price setting, different strategies of market liberalization.

Are gas-based technologies more efficient compared to alternatives like coal or even renewables? This session will provide comparisons for all three sectors: power, heating, transportation. Benchmark could be either tons of CO2 reduction or efficiency increase achieved per investment.

This session will provide:
– Global and regional trends in financial and tax policies that affect the gas industry
– Instruments and incentives that promote the use of gas
– Case studies of success or failure in developing gas projects from perspective of the financial or tax system

This session aims to give an overview of the power of social media, question whether the gas industry globally is leveraging this powerful medium, consider examples of where it is being used effectively and hear from social media experts with advice on how to strategize efficiently.

This session will focus on:
– Examples of projects that address energy access, in particular stakeholders and their roles
– Role of financing in facilitating energy access
– Where does gas provide sustainable energy access
– Role of policy makers and governments in energy access

This session will explore how the gas companies can attract talent in a competitive environment, including the following:
– How to attract a new kind of talent: heat, power, CO2, chemical, automation, AI, machine learning
– What is the importance of positioning your CSR / cyclical economy approach in your employer branding?
– How can your employer branding attract more diverse talents (gender, background, etc.)?

Environmental policies either global or national have developed a number of mechanisms to expedite a move towards low carbon future. Such mechanisms include carbon taxes emission trading schemes, feed-in tariffs, preferential offtake and subsidies. This has changed competitive landscape for natural gas both as input for the power plants, the industry and the households. In this session we will address impact of these policies on gas competitiveness and consumption patterns and fuel switching. The session will consider a positioning of natural gas as public good.

This session aims to define and consider the impact of NGDES on gas affordability.

This session will consider the Innovations to minimize prices of gas and optimize safety of supply.

The session provides examples of gas technologies and energy systems (including integrated electrical/gas systems) with overall efficiency gains. Efficiency includes the categories of energy transition cost, time to market, speed of decarbonization, improvement in flexibility and security of supply and other.