Kosmos Aims at Cleaner Output of Cleaner Fuel: CEO

Independent oil and gas producer Kosmos is going to make its Greater Tortue Ahmeyim gas liquefaction project offshore west Africa as clean as possible, CEO Andrew Inglis told the IP Week conference in London February 25. In an interview with Steve Holliday, president of the Energy Institute and former boss of UK National Grid, he said that the company would use renewable energy for the liquefaction trains, to make the carbon footprint as small as possible.

He also said smaller companies such as his could help developing countries leapfrog the conventional route to clean energy, by going straight to renewable energy supplies and gas.

The challenge for industry is to make the energy needed for production "as low cost and as low carbon" as possible, he said. 

The gas reserves offshore Senegal and Mauretania create an opportunity for the two governments to drive a rapid shift to a renewable world, with Kosmos' help. "It is very much a partnership," he said, explaining that as a small company, it did not have the resources for major investments in decarbonising, such as carbon capture and storage. "This is still at a nascent stage: this is an area where the supermajors have the financing and the technology," he said. Kosmos could instead contribute with "nature-based solutions.... This creates environmental protection and jobs," he said. 

Kosmos also has oil producing assets but these have a very low carbon intensity, he said, at 8 kg/barrel. This is not as low as the renewables-powered Johan Sverdrup oilfield off Norway, but it is lower than most. And given the pressure to decarbonise output, he said these assets would have to have a short payback time to ensure investability. In the meantime, they provide important source of funding for the future. "The transition from oil to gas is supported by a very strong business," he said. "A challenging area is frontier oil," he said, enlarging on the short pay-back requirement. "It is difficult to allocate capital to projects such as those, in a 2° C world. Will they deliver the returns?"