Energy sustainability at first Saudi Electricity Forum

Saudi Aramco participated in the first Saudi Electricity Forum (SEF) and its accompanying exhibition, organized by the Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources (MEIM) at Al Faisaliah Hotel, Riyadh from 10‑12 October 2017.

Saudi Aramco Executive Director of Power Systems, Eng. Abdulkarim Al-Ghamdi said: “Saudi Aramco’s participation in the forum is an important enabler of the company’s greater responsibility to energy sustainability for the Kingdom. Our participation demonstrates our commitment and contributions for the efforts to optimize the fuel mix and maximize profitability to the company and the kingdom. We are also working constantly on initiatives aiming to reduce O&M cost, enhance efficiency, and maximize sustainability.

The company is significantly expanding its applications of renewables in several remote locations to power off-grid gas and oil well facilities, bulk plants and offices which is driven mainly by economics and environment. Saudi Aramco is also strategically pursuing renewable investment at utility-scale to diversify the company portfolio and support the kingdom’s goal to reach 9,500 MW of renewable capacity by year 2023.

Saudi Aramco-owned generation with efficiency reaching 70% is significantly expanding to reach 12 GW by year 2020. Hence, Saudi Aramco is working with the electricity regulator to obtain the necessary licensing requirement for energy export and trading to supply competitive power to investors such as the Energy Industrial City. At the same time, SA is pursuing an initiative to fully implement digitization across all power generation that will further optimize the cost of power and keep its competitive edge among other utility producers.

In line with the fuel optimization strategy for the kingdom, Saudi Aramco has been working with relevant utility companies to reduce crude and diesel burning and was able to successfully reduce crude burning in kingdom this year by 35,000 barrels per day and diesel by 90,000 barrels per day and toward zero diesel burning by 2020. In addition, Saudi Aramco is looking into the utilization of opportunity fuels, such as emulsified fuels, Petcoke, and low BTU gas in the utility sector to maximize value for the kingdom by availing high value fuels for export.

Looking into the future, Saudi Aramco is supporting and expediting deployment of new technologies and improving Saudi content through strategic partnerships. For example, GCC Lab was established as a collaborative effort with the government, industrial partners, and academia to test and inspect major electrical equipment to save time and cost for conformity testing.

Additionally, a National Clean Combustion Test Platform project is under development with national stakeholders to support large scale deployment of energy-efficient and clean fuel technologies.

Within all these effort, Saudi Aramco is driving greater value though the development of local content. The company’s In kingdom Total Value Add (IKTVA) program is designed to drive increased investment, economic diversification, job creation, and workforce development within the Kingdom.