MANAMA: His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa yesterday nominated Oil Minister Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa to inaugurate the fifth Middle East Process Engineering Conference and Exhibition (MEPEC 2019), and the first edition of the World Petroleum Council.
Both the events are being held under the patronage of HRH the Prime Minister until Wednesday at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre organised by Middle East Energy Events in co-operation with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and in co-ordination with the National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga) and with the support of local, national and international companies.
The minister in his inaugural speech said that Noga has launched a number of vital projects such as the new replacement of the oil pipeline linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and the third gas plant of Bahrain National Gas Company (Banagas), which is one of the largest industrial projects in the company’s history.
The actual operation of the plant began in November 2018. It has achieved the first load of 23,000 tonnes of jet gas and 25,000 tonnes of liquefied gas. In addition, the factory was designed to accommodate 350ml, as it will be able to extract 382,000 tonnes per year of LPG liquids, namely propane, butane and naphtha.
As for the project to upgrade the Bahrain refinery, he said that the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco), in co-operation with the companies implementing the project, has worked within the time plan to begin the operational phase of the Bahrain refinery in 2022.
The minister added that Noga is always seeking to strengthen relations with international oil companies to exchange knowledge and experiences and witness latest technologies and studies and research in this vital field.
He pointed out that a number of exploration and production agreements have been signed with international oil companies such as the Italy’s Eni in the North Sea Province No 1 as well as a memorandum of understanding with France’s Total, Baker Hughes and other international companies from the US, Italy, France and other countries.
The minister said the theme of this year’s conference came to meet the desire of participants from different countries, which is expected to reach more than 3,000 participants. That emphasises the need for more engineering solutions for various challenges in the field of operations engineering as a result of the growing demand for energy, which requires increased work to strengthen co-operation between process engineering and technology.
He noted that this year MEPEC included the launch of the first version of the World Petroleum Council conference under the theme “Integration, Strategy and Leadership”, which is one of the largest international conferences specialised in the field of petroleum.
This global event is being attended by speakers, dignitaries, CEOs, decision makers, technicians, engineers and academics from local, regional and international universities.
Also speaking at the session were Azerbaijan Deputy Minister of Energy Elnur Soltanov and Dr Sun Xiansheng, secretary general of International Energy Forum, who discussed the most important oil developments in the world.
Later, Shaikh Mohammed inaugurated the accompanying exhibition. More than 150 exhibitors from different companies are taking part in the 8,000-sqm exhibition, including Saudi Aramco, Sabic, Shell, Bapco, Tatweer Petroleum, Banagas, the Gulf Downstream Association, Yokogawa, Harry Burton, Baker Hughes and Chevron.
&uuid=(email))