Dr Sultan Al Jaber, ADNOC’s group CEO, who was recently appointed as COP28 president-designate, urged energy leaders to “drive sustainable progress while holding back emissions.”
“Houston, we have a problem,” Al Jaber said, borrowing a famous line from a US astronaut aboard a damaged spacecraft during the Apollo 13 mission in 1970. His remarks were welcomed by a loud applause from the nearly 1,000 attendees at CERAWeek energy conference currently underway in Houston, Texas.
“Energy leaders in this room have the knowledge, experience, expertise and the resources needed to address the dual challenge of driving sustainable progress while holding back emissions,” Jaber said in his speech to an audience that included OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais and US climate envoy John Kerry, according to a Reuters report.
He called on his peers to get behind efforts to limit global warming. “Alongside all industries, the oil and gas needs to up its game, do more and do it faster,” Jaber said.
Al Jaber, who is also the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and special envoy on climate change, said that the oil and gas sector needs to rapidly decarbonise its operations.
“Only half of the industry has declared a scope 1 and 2 net-zero goal by 2050,” he said.
“Everyone in the industry needs to be aligned around the same goal. And we should stretch ourselves to go further and let’s aim to achieve net-zero even earlier.
“Let’s also scale up best practices and aim to reach net-zero methane emissions by 2030. We must electrify operations, equip facilities with carbon capture and storage, and use all available technologies to increase efficiency across the board.”
