In its continuing series of Guest Lectures and Thought Leadership Programmes, PetroFed organised a Lecture by Mr. James Burkhard, Managing Director, Global Oil Group, Cambridge Energy Research Associates on December 20, 2007 at the PetroFed Conference Hall on ‘The Refiner’s New Diet: Light Liquids to Dominate Upstream Supply Growth’.  The session was chaired by Dr. U D Choubey, CMD, GAIL (India) Limited.

Mr. Burkhard leads the team of experts that analyse and assess upstream and downstream business strategies, brought out that though no peak is seen by 2020 in the world’s liquids productive capacity, the production may increasingly be concentrated among fifteen countries.  He also brought out graphically that the composition of oil supply growth is changing and that there may be a mismatch between upstream supply growth and product demand expectations.

The changing demand, Mr. Burkhard said, would need more secondary processing using the hydrogen route because of the projected change in demand in favour of middle distillates.

He earlier confirmed that the growth in light liquid hydrocarbons that will dominate growth in total liquids supply by 2020 included not only natural gas liquids and condensate, but also bio-fuels, gas-to-liquids (GTL) and coal-to-liquids (CTL). The light liquids’ share of total liquids productive capacity is projected to rise from 19 percent currently to 28 percent in 2020 whereas the share of crude oil—including extra-heavy oil—will fall from 81 percent to 72 percent during the same period.

Session Chairman, Dr. Choubey, in his concluding remarks injected a case for developing stranded gas and associated condensate and C-3/C-4s while looking at the supply demand equation.