Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep https://doi.org/10.1007/s40518-017-0091-3

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION (D SUNDARARAJAN, SECTION EDITOR)

Sustainability Challenges in Oil and Gas Development in the Middle East and North Africa Mohan S. Rana 1 & Mari Vinoba 1 & Faisal S. AlHumaidan 1

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Abstract Purpose of Review This review focuses on sustainability challenges in oil and gas development, which established a literature-based framework for clean fuel predominantly with reference to MENA region, and identifies the trend for oil and natural gas usage and their effect on the technologies and its human development index. What are the missing gaps for fossil fuel in order to obtain clean fuels, and how can those gaps identify and resolve the environmental issue by using fossil fuel as an energy source? Recent Findings The findings indicate that fossil fuel will remain the major source of energy and transportation fuels, which can be effectively refined using catalytic refining processes along with the CO2 capturing and storage techniques in order to reduce global warming. Summary Sustainable development refers to basic information about the social, economic, and environment aspects of human activity. Among the main driving elements of sustainability are the progress made in technology and the utilization of energy resources. Worldwide, the use of renewable energy sources may increase but has moderate progress. Thus, the fossil fuels are playing a vital role in the energy world but require efficient refining processes to produce high-quality clean fuels for transportation as well as energy production.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Environmental Issues in Oil and Gas Production * Mohan S. Rana [email protected]

1

Petroleum Research Center, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, P.O. Box 24885, 13109 Safat, Kuwait

Keywords Fossil fuel . Renewable energy . Greenhouse gas . Sustainable energy . Social responsibility . Economic sustainability

Introduction Due to the recent environmental apprehension, fossil fuelbased energy sectors are facing prevalent challenges that remain difficult to answer despite the enormous technological development. Currently, ~ 85% of the global energy demand is being produced from fossil fuels, resulting in enormous CO2 emission into the atmosphere at a rate of around 60 g of CO2/megajoule [1]. The amount of CO2 emission from fossil fuels is dependent on the nature and the composition of the hydrocarbon itself (i.e., coal, oil, and gas) as clearly illustrated in Fig. 1a, which reveals the amount of CO2 emission and energy consumption with respect to various energy sources. In consideration of the foregoing, not all fossil fuels are good sources of energy due to their negative impact on the environment [2•, 3, 4, 5••, 6]. The amount of energy production from fossil fuel depends on the quality of fossil fuels and conclusively corresponds to the hydrogen-to-carbon ratio [7], where the presence of hydrogen enhances clean and efficient burning as in the case of natural gas where the H/C ratio is 4 (Fig. 1b). Natural gas (NG) is one of the main hydrocarbon resources, which contain large amount of methane (CH4) than other hydrocarbons. It has been reported the CH4 high combustion energy about 812 kJ due to the highest H/C ratio [8]. According to hydrogen-to-carbon ratio, the higher ratio contains hydrocarbons release the higher combustion energy at lower oxidation state. Hence, NG acts as a clean fuel due to lower CO2 emission level compared to other fossil fuels that are oil and coal about 30 and 45%, respectively [9].

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Electricity production CO2 production

H//C ratio

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Biomass

Hydrocarbon Energy sources

Nuclear

Hydro

Coal

Oil shale

Oil

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Fossil fuel

Biomass

Others (renewable) Primery hydrocarbon energy source

Fig. 1 Worldwide conventional energy sources (a) and their hydrogen-to-carbon (H/C) ratio (b)

Generally, the fossil fuel is classified as conventional (crude oil, NG, and condensate), traditional (heavy oil, ultradeep oil, and tight oil), and unconventional (extra heavy oil, sand/bitumen, soil shale/kerogen, gas to liquid, and coal to liquid) oils [10]. The unconventional oil is typically much heavier, carbon laden, and sourer and has very low H/C ratio. The fast depletion of conventional crude oils has forced the world to exploit other available sources of unconventional fossil fuel. Shale is a type of sedimentary rock, which can be used as an alternative source for oil and gas. Shale oil is extracted by heating kerogen in a pyrolysis process without air or oxygen atmosphere. These unconventional fossil fuels are known for their high production and processing costs. The heavy crude oils are one of the primary alternatives for conventional crude oils, but they are highly viscous with relatively low API gravity (less than 20° API). Heavy crude oils are also known for their hydrogen deficiency (low H/C ratio), high asphaltene content, and high level of impurities (i.e., heteroatoms such as S, N, Ni, and V). These characteristics make the heavy crude oils very difficult to process, considering the strict environmental legislations for clean fuels [11, 12•]. Currently, these heavy crude oils are processed in complex refineries using expensive hydroprocessing treatments, which take place at severe operating conditions in the presence of catalyst and hydrogen [13••, 14, 15]. The demand of producing clean petroleum products from heavy crude oils, through strict environmental legislations, is one of the main challenges faced by the downstream industry. The high level of impurities in transportation fuels, for example, negatively impacts the environment through smog (particulate matter (PM)), acid rain (SOx, NOx, etc.), and toxic air pollution. In addition to transportation, power generation sectors are identified as a major contributor in CO2 emission into air pollution and global warming. For example, only in 2015, the powergenerating sectors around the world have produced nearly 36.24 billion tons of CO2 (http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ overview.php?v=CO2ts1990-2015). Such significant emissions of greenhouse gases are the main driver for global

warming, where atmospheric average temperature is expected to increase beyond 2 °C by the year 2100 [16]. To detain the greenhouse effects, one may think about abandoning all oildriven engines and extinguishing all fires under boilers at power stations. However, without light and electricity, our current societies may not be able to subsist. Therefore, the world’s energy sector needs to look for cleaner and greener energy resources and/or develop technologies that allow the utilization of fossil fuels without causing much harm to the environment [17–20]. Figure 2 is one way to represent the synergetic effect for sustainable human development, where a clean environment supports an existence of healthy society and an economically strong community [1, 21, 22]. The triangle dark “green zone” is displayed with a critical combination of an adequate ratio of three main aspects for sustainability of human activities such as health, education, and income. In other words, the isolation of one circle may not provide sustainable society. The components of these three broad circles are further exemplified in Fig. 3, where the role of energy is clearly associated with sustainability.

Green Zone

(Sustainability)

Fig. 2 Sustainable green zone requires the integration of three elements

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep Fig. 3 A multiple-cluster classification for sustainability

Sustainability Economic Sustainability

Social Sustainability

Employment

Safety

Education

Working hours

Pollution Waste Recycle

Community involvement

Training

Environmental Sustainability

Water usage Equality & diversity

Engagement

Energy

Traffic emissions Conventional Energy Natural Gas, Oil, Coal

The rapid increase in energy demand along with minimum environment impact is one of the main challenges that societies face today [23, 24•]. Thus, renewable energy sources are a key solution to handle the environmental problems related to emissions. Figure 4 shows the world’s energy distribution with respect to various energy sources, which reveals that around 20% of the world’s total energy contributed from renewable resources [2•, 6, 25, 26•]. Hence, the needs and the importance of renewable energy resources are growing, and it is reflected in the steadily increasing research activities in both academia and industry. However, diverting the world’s energy system away from fossil fuel is a hefty task with lofty expectations. Billions of people around the world are struggling for their daily energy need to meet their very basic requirements, where around 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity while another 2.7 billion people are still relying on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating [27]. Such indicators

Renewable Energy Hydro, Geo, Wind, Solar, Photo, Biomass

suggest that fossil fuel utilization is going to remain pivotal for an extended period of time, particularly for the basic need of many rural areas of developing countries as well as some urban, slums, and undeveloped areas, which may take decades to reach a proper usage of electricity [28, 29]. Therefore, fossil fuels will inevitably play a major role in expanding on-grid energy supply in the coming decades, taking into consideration the rapid increase in the world’s population and the prominent economic development in many developing countries. However, raising awareness about the renewable energy sources with small decentralized solutions will have huge impact in providing reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy services for such situation, particularly in rural areas of developing countries. The share of renewables in the world’s energy matrix is gradually increasing and is expected to further increase in the future as shown in Fig. 5. One of the main constrains of renewable exploitation and implementation is

Fig. 4 Energy source classification and their global distribution

Energy Sources

Fossil Fuel (78.3%)

Coal (41.1%)

Oil (4.4%)

Wind (1.4%)

Nuclear (2.5%)

Gas (32.8%)

Solar (2.2%)

Modern renewable (10.3%)

Geothermal & Ocean (0.5%)

All renewable (19.2%)

Traditional biomass (8.9%)

Biofuel (2.3%)

Hydropower (3.9%)

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep Fig. 5 Changes in primary energy sources and their share in the world’s energy matrix over the years 2000 to 2050

their economic feasibility compared to fossil fuel. However, the economic constraints can be overcome through technological development and mass energy production. Another factor that may accelerate the employment of renewable energy is the strict environmental policies and regulations, which impose many constraints on fossil fuel utilization. As previously indicated, the growing population and economic developments in many countries are substantially increasing their energy demand [30•]. Hence, our environmental and social challenges are growing with the energy requirements. Figure 5 exhibits that oil and natural gas will continue to be the world’s leading energy resource for the foreseeable future. However, to continue meeting the world’s energy demand through fossil fuels, the industry will have to invest massive amounts of capital and venture into even more

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challenging and costlier technologies in both upstream and downstream. Moreover, the large amount of unconventional heavy crude oil indicated fossil fuel resources to be expected as the main contributor to the world’s energy demand in the near future [13••, 31, 32]. In addition to the upstream challenges, profound focus should be directed toward challenges associated with downstream as the unconventional crude oils are known for their high level of impurities (i.e., sulfur, nitrogen, metals, and asphaltene) and low distillate yields [11, 12•]. The impact of unconventional crude oils has already been noticed in the refining industry, where most of the newly established refineries are being designed to handle heavier feedstock while the existing ones are upgraded and reconfigured to meet quality needed for fuel standards. The production of the clean fuels, ultra-low sulfur diesel and

Tunisia Libya Egypt Algeria

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Fig. 6 Production of oil and gas in Middle East (a) and North Africa (b)

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Natural G as, Trillion cubic f eet

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep 35 Forcast

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Fig. 7 Over period of natural gas utilization in various sectors

Energy usage, quadrillion BTU

gasoline, from the unconventional heavy oils requires significant effort from both process/technology developers and catalyst manufactures as commercially available technologies do not meet the future aspiration when it comes to environment and “cleaner fossil fuel technologies.” The current worldwide supplies indicated that about 70% fossil fuel originates from the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, which are rich in natural resources of fossil fuels with the world’s largest non-renewable energy reserves. Figure 6 data compiled from IEA report for oil and gas production from MENA region [24•] reveals that the Middle East region plays greater role in fossil fuel supply than the North African region. Apart from their relatively small sizes (geographically), countries in the Middle East like Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE contribute significantly to the world’s fossil fuel supply. On the other hand, the oil sectors in the North African countries of Algeria, Libya, and Egypt have witnessed major transformations and political

instabilities in the past decade. Some countries, such as Libya and Egypt, went for their reform time to time, and they allow their petroleum sector for international investment by forming partnerships with foreign oil companies. On the other hand, the oil sectors in the North African countries such as Algeria, Libya, and Egypt have witnessed major transformations and political instabilities in the past decade. Some countries (Libya and Egypt) reformed their markets and opened up petroleum sector for international investment or building partnerships with foreign oil companies. As previously stated, about 1.3 billion people are still lacking accessibility to electricity, which represents more than 20% of the global population, and most of them are in Africa [11, 24•, 33]. Figure 7 shows (current and future) the electricity production by natural gas equivalent (trillion cubic feet (tcf)), where the Middle East region is consuming huge amount of energy compared to the African region, which is mainly due to the growing industrialization. The forecast of NG consumption in the next 25 years indicates that about 65% (10 tcf) more NG will be required in the Middle East compared to the present consumption, while African region will be required about 50% (5 tcf) [33, 34••]. The relationship among the population, oil consumption, energy usage along with human development index (HDI) has been reported in Fig. 8, which reveals a good relationship between oil consumption and energy usage, while the HDI saturated at a considerably low amount of energy usage. Usually, three values are needed in order to calculate HDI for a particular country such as life expectancy at birth, education (adult and post-secondary literacy), and finally gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in US dollar [35–37]. In order to calculate education percentage (EP), first is to measure adult literacy rate (ALR) while second is the

US China

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Fig. 8 Relative measure for population (million), oil consumption (thousands bbl/day), energy use (quadrillion BTU), and human development index (HDI) (data used from Brecha et al. [38])

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education enrollment (primary, secondary) in school (EES), which can be represent as EP ¼

2 1 ALR þ EES 3 3

To convert life expectancy value for specific country to calculate life expectancy index (LEI), we need to identify a reasonable minimum and maximum for each of these values. Usually, reasonable values used by United Nation (UN) are minimum 25 while maximum 85 values [35]. LEI ¼

LEV−25 85−25

For the final GDP conversion to GDP index (GDPI), we require GDP per capita in US$ for an index value, which has been calculated a bit different by using base 10 logarithms so that the effect of large GDP values is reduced. The minimum and maximum values used by UN for the GDP are 100 and 40,000, respectively, as shown in the equation. GDPI ¼

logðGDPÞ −logð100Þ logð40000Þ −log ð100Þ

Now in order to calculate HDI, we have considered an example of Kuwait, where the life expectancy at birth is 77.1 years, the adult literacy rate is 93.3%, the educational enrollment is 73%, while the gross domestic product is $19,384. HDI ¼ HDI Kuwait

EP þ LEI þ GDPI 3

0:868 þ 0:865 þ 0:879 ¼ 0:871 ¼ 3

Worldwide Energy Resources and Role of Fossil Fuel About 80% of the world’s total energy demand is satisfied by combustion of fossil fuels, which results in substantial amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, including CO2 and high levels of SOx and NOx. The major CO2 emitters are the electricity production and the transport sectors, which contributed 66 and 20% of total global CO2 emissions, respectively. The selection of energy resources depends on their availability, production cost, processing cost, and environmental legislation. Apart from the fossil fuel, the renewable energy resources like solar, wind, and hydro are also used for energy production, but their utilization remains limited due to issues related to technical viability and economic feasibility [1, 2•, 30•, 39]. Transport is another essential human activity, and it has played an important role in the development of many societies. However, the environmental costs of this energy-intensive sector are also critical, which produce large amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Apart from GHG emissions, large amount of sulfur/nitrogen emissions (i.e., SOx and NOx) are harmful to human health and the environment, which are of greater concern for acid rain and particulate matter (PM) pollution. Thus, the scope of fossil fuels in global energy matrix remains very high to support the current energy requirements. Further advancements in fossil fuel production and processing can entirely change the fossil fuel perception, where they become “part of the solution” rather than “part of the problem” with respect to clean fuel via emphasizing on hydroprocessing (refining) and minimizing the CO2 emission using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Therefore, fossil fuels are likely to continue their domination [26•, 39]. The energy sectors need to invest in technology development for renewables to gradually replace fossil fuel in the long-term future. The energy consumption is an authentic HDI, which has been calculated in the previous section that reveals the country’s achievements and basic aspects of human development (i.e., longevity, literacy, and living standards) as quoted in United National Human Development (UNDP) report [40]. In the MENA region, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirate, and Kuwait have very HDI, which are listed in top 50 countries. Therefore, the energy sector should focus on both developing advanced technology for fossil fuel to control emissions as well as developing technology for renewables for long-term energy security. Sustainability Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa The sustainable development refers to adjust existing economic models in order to maintain better balances between economic growth and social needs, while protecting local ecologies and reducing the negative impact of growth on the global environment. The MENA region is endowed with enormous resources of oil and gas, which is reflected in strong economy in this region [13••, 41]. Resource endowment varies from one country to another in the MENA region, but considering their areas and populations, most of those countries are able to manage their needs. Most of MENA countries are dependent on their oil and gas-based economy, and this region is considered the world’s leading supplier of fossil fuels. The Middle East countries are known for their lustrous modernity, luxury stores, built-in and richness with lead in sustainability standards. It is presumed that the region lacks behind on sustainability, but the stereotyped view is one of flashy over-consumption to match an excess of wealth from oil production. The Middle East region has extreme climate (hot and cold), but its modernization is much faster than that of North Africa due to stable economic, which is driven by the availability of fossil fuel resources. However, the region is also known for its political instability and dependence on foreign expertise, technologies, and skilled manpower.

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep

Recently, these regions are streamlining their sustainability approach in the construction of industries and setting a holistic framework that leads toward reducing resource consumption, i.e., energy, water, and other natural resources. The regional corporate social responsibility programs have been integrated to sustainability concepts to give back to the community in which they are operating, and those initiatives include health and safety, education, eco-friendly solutions, and community investments. However, these efforts are hindered by natural and operational challenges like shortage of water, poor awareness in sustainability, and negligence in environmental issues despite the high education levels. Sustainability Challenges—Worldwide Scenario The global oil production capacity has been growing steadily, about 87 million barrels per day (b/d) over the last decade, and is expected to reach greater than 99 million b/d by 2030 [33, 42, 43]. However, the current reservoir productivity rate is declining, around 3.5% per year, and may decrease to half of its present production rate by 2030 [44]. The production gap will be covered with new field and reservoir production rate, around 65 million b/d by a daunting task. Natural gas demand is rapidly increasing in the developing countries due to wellestablished industries and the imposed strict environmental legislations. The current global NG consumption is ~ 112 tcf per year and is expected to reach 160 tcf per year by 2030 [2•, 12•]. Currently, the numbers of the world’s NG resources are conventional, while others, most of them, are (~ 6600 tcf) unconventional sources, which will require innovative solutions in production, processing, and transportation in order to fulfill the market demand. Thus, the industry will have to invest substantial amounts of capital and venture into more challenging and costlier production, and to supply oil and NG without interruption. In addition to the substantial capital

The world’s energy supply has historically dominated by fossil fuels, which is expected to continue for a long period. However, due to environmental impact, MENA region is facing difficulties to prepare long-term strategies because of worldwide descaling interest in the fossil fuel energy resources [13••]. Therefore, a question remains constant, how far global energy markets will move from fossil fuels to renewable sources and how fast this will happen. The previous discussion clearly indicates that such movement will take time, and Fig. 9 reveals that in the MENA region, the progress toward replacing fossil fuels with renewables is very limited and will take a long time. The figure shows that the vast majority of electricity production in the MENA region is from oil and NG, with very limited reliance on renewables [2•, 40]. Coal, on the other hand, plays an important role in the production of electricity in both Morocco and Israel, where coal contributes to 55 and 49% of electricity production, respectively. Apart from these two countries, most of electricity is generated via oil and gas. In the MENA region, electricity is within reach to approximately 98% of population, except for Mauritania (72%) and Yemen (54%), indicating low HDI [40, 45]. Fossil Fuel Scenario in MENA Region About 60% of the world’s total oil and gas reserve fields are located in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar,

NA

Algeria Egypt Libya Tunisia Morrocco Mauritania Iran Oatar Saudi Arabia UAE Oman Kuwait Bahrain Yemen Israel Syria Iraq Jordon Lebanon

ME

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Renewable Energy Integration: a Delicate Balancing Act

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investment, the oil sector is facing a genuine challenge in attracting qualified human resource with technical and management skills, which are very crucial for the successful implementation of the new massive projects in both upstream and downstream sectors of the petroleum industry.

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Electricity production (TWh)

Fig. 9 The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) electricity production (a), sources, and access (b)

Access to electricity, % population

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Fig. 10 Variation in MENA oil (a) and natural gas (b) reserves

production rates of both oil and gas showed an increasing trend for ME and a decreasing trend for NA. A possible reason for relatively stable oil production, stable support, could be due to the moderate oil price (market balance) or oil international market saturation. On the other hand, NG demand is significantly increased at international as well as domestic markets; hence, obvious effect is shown in production. It is less likely that the production is affected by the alternative or non-hydrocarbon-based energy resources. Considering a gamut of concerns together, the MENA region is expected to play an important but unpredictable role to the oil and gas future scenarios [46, 48].

Energy Production Role of MENA Region

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The worldwide trends for oil and gas productions are expected to stabilize with some slight variations that are mainly attributed to market price and environmental legislations, which already have an impact on the energy sectors (coal ≫ oil > gas). Hence, the conversion of fossil fuels to energy has

Oil production, thousand bbl/day

Iraq, and UAE) and North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco) [2•, 34••, 46]. The historical scenarios of oil reserves in the past 45 years are presented in Fig. 10a, which indicates that both regions have almost similar progress with time. Around 52% of the world’s total oil reserves are available in MENA region, from which 48% is from ME and 4% from NA [47]. On the other hand, the world’s NG reserve is conventionally increasing, and at the end of 2015 showed the world’s total reserve of NG near 1,94,501 billion cubic meter (BCM) [46–48••]. The ME share in the world’s reserve of NG is about 37%, while NA contributed to around 7% [2•, 24•], as summarized in Fig. 10b. The total crude oil production in the MENA represents approximately 35% of the world’s total production, where the contributions of ME and NA are, respectively, 31.5 and 3.5% [2•, 47]. Furthermore, it was reported that global oil consumption was propagated by 1.9 million b/d, or nearly double the recent historical average (+ 1%) and significantly stronger than the increase of 1.1 million b/d in 2014 [49]. Similarly, the NG consumption also grew by 1.7% in 2015 [50]. Considering the world’s NG production, MENA region has contributed about 38%, of which ME share is 26% while NA share is 12%. Despite the fact that worldwide petroleum demand has significantly increased in the past 15 years, oil and gas productions in MENA region did not reflect on the world’s demand, as shown in Fig. 11. Figure 11 shows the overview of crude oil and natural gas production in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2004, the production rate of crude oil and natural gas in ME and NAwas 30.6 and 5.4%, respectively. However, the production has slightly increased in ME to about 31.9%, but slowly decreased in NA to 3.4% in 2015. The natural gas production has rapidly increased in ME between 2000 and 2015 from 6.97 to 16.03%, but ~ 0.5% production has decreased from 4.35% in NA. In the period between 2000 and 2015, the energy production by oil equivalent in the ME and NA regions varied from 12.3 to 13.4% and 2.7 to 2.0%, respectively. Overall, the

0 0 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 Years

Fig. 11 Production of oil and NG in the MENA region [data from reference 25]

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40000 y = 1.5539x - 7982.1 R² = 0.9147

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Figure 12 shows the relationship between increasing oil production and energy production in the last 45 years for both ME and NA. Between 2000 and 2015, the energy production by oil equivalent in the Middle East and North Africa regions varies between 12.3 and 13.4% and 2.7 and 2.0%, respectively. In the MENA region, substantial amount of energy is produced from natural gas, which has a higher efficiency with cleaner energy. Figure 13 illustrates the primary energy consumption of fossil fuels (oil and NG) to generate electricity for different countries in ME and NA. Overall, the MENA region has significant domination in natural gas-based energy production except in Saudi Arabia, which is the first in terms of conventional oil reserve, second largest oil producer, and sixth largest consumer of oil in the world [47, 53]. The natural gas production as well as its consumption in the form of energy shows growing trend in MENA, about 20% of the world’s total production [24•]. Figure 14 shows that the production of oil in MENA remains considerably constant since 1980 while NG production is continuously growing.

already significant impact on the environment due to undesirable gas emissions, which are the most enduring challenges for scientists and engineers. Encountering this challenge requires innovative solutions that can be attained by strengthening the collaboration between the research institutions and the different sectors in the petroleum industry. The recent trend in research activity clearly indicates an increasing interest in important issue [51, 52], where the energy consumption is closely associated with globalization and industrialization. Further, there is an expected link between energy consumption and quality of life value as reflected by HDI (Fig. 8). Where, the rapid growth is considered for developing countries, while level off (stable) phase corresponds to the developed countries. Hence, there is a significant gap between the human aspects of development and energy consumption. Among various energy sources, about 30% energy requirement has been fulfilled by oil and gas, and MENA regions have large number of reserves among all around the world. In 2015, these regions were reported to have significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas, which, respectively, has 52.5 and 40.5% of the world’s total reserve of crude oil and natural gas [47]. Total NA Egypt Algeria Total ME Other ME Middle East

Fig. 13 Primary energy consumption by fossil fuel used to generate electricity

Energy production, thousand bbl/day of oil equivalent

Energy production, thousand bbl/day of oil equivalent

Fig. 12 Relationship between energy and fossil fuel (oil and NG liquids) productions (1970–2015) for Middle East (a) and North Africa (b)

% NG (31.94%), total world

UAE

% oil (22.28%), total world

Saudi Arebia Qatar Kuwait

0.59 % total coal used for energy

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4 6 8 10 12 %, Primary Energy Consumption (worldwide)

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Oil and NG % variation of world production

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that have no connection to crude oils. Thus, people often refer to the associated and non-associated gas as the wet gas and dry gas, respectively. In the past, the associated gas was often regarded as undesired by-product that should be flared or vented; however, with the increased focus on sustainable development, many gas utilization projects have been completed to eliminate wasting such valuable sources of energy. The production of the non-associated gas is known for its high cost due to the presence of larger amount of acid gas (H2S), which should be separated from NG to reduce its severe environmental impact [59]. North African countries such as Algeria and Libya have NG export to Italy via pipeline. Egypt is relatively new to NG international market, but it is currently supplying its NG in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) due to concern on issues associated with methane leak from well or during processing and transportation, since methane is recognized as GHG, which is almost 25 times higher potential than CO2 [30•]. The global oil production since 2004 has increased 3.2% (2.8 million b/d). This increase included the increase in Iraq and Saudi Arabia productions, which are, respectively, + 750,000 b/d and + 510,000 b/d [49]. Thus, it appears that production rate in MENA has considerable record growth, which showed significant increment at global scale [12•, 48••].

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Fig. 14 Oil and natural gas production in MENA region

Alternative and Sustainable Energy in MENA The electricity production sector is one of the largest CO2 emitter, where about 70% of the world’s electricity is produced from fossil fuels (Fig. 1a). It is obvious that renewable energy sources use indigenous resources, which have the potential to provide energy services with zero emissions [2•]. Recent BP statistics indicates that renewable energy sources have contributed to around 15% of the world’s total energy

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Saudi Arebia

ME

Fig. 15 Renewable energy consumption by ME and NA countries

NA

For some countries in MENA, the NG production is mainly directed toward the domestic demand (Saudi Arabia, Iran, and UAE), while in other countries, NG is exported (Qatar, Algeria, and Egypt). NG is considered as clean fuel than oil and coal, but its leakage is significant (i.e., 0.2 to 10% to total production) during the production, processing, transportation, and distribution [54, 55], as resultant caused significant level of methane increase in the atmosphere. In fact, methane is considered as a strong absorber of sun’s heat that is contributing significantly to global warming. USA loses about 2 to 3% of its total natural gas production each year, which is either leaked or vented out in the atmosphere [56–58]. Usually, NG production depends on the source of gas, and there are primary two sources: associated gas reserves and the non-associated gas reserves [59]. The associated gas is the one produced as a by-product of crude oil production, and its production typically declines after few years. On the other hand, the non-associated gas is primarily produced from reservoirs

Qatar Kuwait Israel

Iran 0

0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 Primary Energy Consumption, Million tonnes oil equivalent

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep

2.5 CO2 release, mol/103 kJ

demand, while this contribution happens to be very limited in MENA with only 0.35% in 2014 and 0.42% in 2015 (Fig. 15). Such limited utilization of renewables can be either credited to their high cost, availability of fossil fuels, and lack of environmental legislations. The MENA region plays a significant role in the world’s energy demand, but this region is very limited to use renewable energy due to the cost and environment issues involved [46–48••]. Moreover, the renewable energy (mainly solar, wind) will be cost-effective, and being built or realization of these technologies is fast and can easily vary with time and market demand.

H/C = 1/1 (coal)

2

H/C = 2/1 (oil)

1.5

H/C = 4/1 (gas) 1 0.5 H2

Developing Clean Energy Technology and Role of Catalysis As previously indicated, oil and gas will remain controlling our long-term sustainable energy in the future, and their negative impact cannot be ignored in climate change. Regardless of truth, the important thing is to address the minimization of GHG emission into the atmosphere, and regulation cost that will be enforced on people. Thus, the society needs to be engaged in a part of the solution and is not just perceived as a problem. Even though, the economy and energy requirement of MENA region depend on fossil fuels. The high quality of fossil fuel will give the wide scope of clean environmental and healthy society. In order to develop clean fossil fuel, considerable number of clean fuel projects have begun in various refineries [15, 60, 61], which leads to clean fuel for transportation as well as statically operated fuel engines. Currently, the fuel and catalysis researchers are focused on developing innovative techniques for various fractions of hydrocarbons that will be improved based on the engine performance as well as fuel burning capacity. Thus, there will be enduring challenges for researcher to develop emerging clean fuel technologies to improve H/C ratio, remove heteroatoms to zero level, reduce aromatic content, enhance octane/cetane numbers, and improve smoke point. Based on the design and processing capacity, ME refineries represent about 8 to 9% of the global total refining capacity. The MENA region fossil fuel dimensions are strongly addressed as part of the international development process. The environmental issues and social sustainability of MENA region show simultaneously growing trends, and the process is an integral part of economic growth. The other refinery parameters such as supply and demand must be addressed for specified end user requirement in order to meet environment regulations. Consecutively, specific processes and/or catalysts need to be deployed to obtain required product through hydroprocessing that remove heteroatoms (sulfur, nitrogen, and metals) as well as significantly improve H/C ratio [62••], which effectively burn fossil fuel with minimum CO2 formation as shown in Fig. 16. Hence, the hydroprocessing is not only removing S, N, O, and metal heteroatoms but also significantly improving

0 0

20

40

60 80 100 Energy content, kJ/g

120

140

Fig. 16 Energy content for fossil fuel

hydrogenation (H/C ratio) of unsaturated (olefin and aromatics) fossil fuels [12•, 63]. Further, the catalyst can effectively convert harmful gases (CO, NO, and HC) to an acceptable levels without reducing performance and fuel economy. In this case, Rh-supported catalyst can convert NOx into O2 and N2, and Pt and Pd-supported catalyst can convert the CO and HC into CO2 and H2O. A favorable time-on-stream improvement has been reported by Pd and Co-supported catalysts toward the lean oxidation of methane [64]. Therefore, the catalysts contributed a significant role in various sectors such as power, energy, materials, and environment. The ME and NA refineries contribute to the world’s refinery capacity, about 8 to 9% and 2 to 2.5%, respectively. Hence, the majority of refineries are in this region, which are complex by nature and produce a variety of market products. Considering the importance of environmental issues, most of the refineries focus on hydrotreating processes in order to obtain clean fuel products such as gasoline and diesel fractions. In this regard, the number of refineries is required to improve the quality of clean fuel products and conversion efficiency by applying novel catalyst and process integration, which is essential to utilizing existing natural resources (i.e., fossil fuel) to improve energy conversion efficiencies. In order to further improve, there is substantial room for innovation in these areas by developing new catalytic materials with more selective and higher conversion rate, minimizing catalyst deactivation, limiting emissions, and producing hydrogen, and production of ultra-clean fuels should also be given attention.

Conclusion The global fossil fuel requirement is expecting to grow in order to satisfy the energy demand. Among the various fossil fuels, oil and gas are recognized and account about 32.9% of

Curr Sustainable Renewable Energy Rep

global energy consumption. The clean energy task is to take the necessary step to meet the world’s rising energy demand. MENA region has remained resilient in many factors that may not be as simple, because of the limited technological development in the area of CO2 emission. Thus, the recovery of emitting gas effort must be continued to invest in energy sectors and to meet future needs for clean and healthy environment. It was shown that the energy consumption per capita is directly proportional to the industrial development as well as with human development index. It is concluded that renewable energy will take a long time to overcome fossil fuel-based energy. The climatic changes are associated with large industrialization and huge energy demand, which leads to large amount of CO2 emission by burning of fossil fuels. GHG emission can be minimized through refining using catalystbased technologies by producing high-quality fuels for transportation as well as energy. The Middle East and North Africa countries are expected to remain as the main exporter of oil and gas for many countries. The refining process in ME is expected to be strong and develop further their refining infrastructure toward increasing their market product quantity as well as quality. However, irrespective of refining, CCS technology is also necessary to complement fossil fuel-based energy system. The use of renewable energy sources may increase but has moderate progress in the MENA region. Thus, fossil fuels are playing a vital role in the energy world but require efficient refining process to produce high-quality clean fuels for transportation as well as energy production. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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