Petrobras is working with bold goals for the coming years, in terms of reducing polluting gas emissions, he revealed to Brazil Agency the director of Energy Transition and Sustainability at Petrobras, Maurício Tolmasquim.
According to Tolmasquim, one of these goals consists of further reducing methane (CH4), a gas that has the greatest impact on global warming, in the initial phase of a process prior to production (upstream), which currently stands at 0.22 tons of methane. per 1,000 tons of hydrocarbon. The idea is to reach 0.2 tons of CH4 by 2030, considered almost zero, said the director.
The second “super bold” goal, according to Maurício Tolmasquim, is to put into operation 14 new FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading) platforms, which can produce, store and transfer oil and natural gas.
“Despite increasing oil and gas production, we are proposing to maintain the level of absolute emissions until 2028. In other words, we will enormously increase the capacity to produce oil and gas while maintaining emissions,” he explained.
The next step, according to Tolmasquim, is to reduce further, in order to reach 0% net emissions by 2050.
The 2024 Climate Report, released this Tuesday (30), shows that the company’s absolute carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell 41% in the period from 2015 to 2023, compared to 39% between 2015 and 2022. In terms of methane , absolute emission was reduced by 68%.
Carbon neutral
Maurício Tolmasquim highlighted that the entire decarbonization part is linked to a program adopted by the state-owned company, called Carbon Neutral, which is transversal, that is, it involves all areas of Petrobras, under the responsibility of the Climate and Decarbonization executive management.
Technicians linked to the Carbon Neutral Program are always working to ensure that processes and technologies are chosen according to the criteria of greatest savings, that is, what are the potential for improving the efficiency of processes, in order to decarbonize, said Tolmasquim. “Thanks to this effort, we are able to improve emissions,” he said.
For this purpose, an instrument called the Decarbonization Fund was created. The first portfolio of projects to use this fund had initiatives in the exploration and production, refining, gas and energy and logistics segments. The Decarbonization Fund budget was increased from US$600 million to US$1 billion in the 2024/2028 period.
Petrobras’ methodology forces its executives to choose the project that presents the best return for the company. “That’s the rule”, guarantees Tolmasquim.
Sometimes, however, the difference in investment between a project that gives a higher return but emits more and another that emits less is so small that Petrobras uses the Decarbonization Fund, enabling the executive to obtain resources from the fund and choose the project that emits any less.
“It is an internal fund in which management is carried out by a committee. There is a whole governance criterion, but it allows us to maintain the company’s rule of always choosing the process that gives the greatest return. But I have a fund that helps the process that emits less to be competitive with the one that emits more. This is proving to be a very valuable instrument”, explained Tolmasquim.
The executive manager of Climate and Decarbonization, Viviana Coelho, informed that, currently, the fund has around 700 opportunities or alternatives to reduce emissions.
“The instrument has a marginal abatement cost curve that orders, in terms of increasing cost, these 700 alternatives. This is proving to be very effective”, added Tolmasquim.
Viviana said that there are already more than 30 projects in the Decarbonization Fund. “They have the potential to reduce emissions by the size of an entire refinery or three platforms, to get a sense of the scale of these projects. It’s as if an entire refinery stopped emitting or if three platforms stopped emitting.”
