Good morning everybody to the Cedigaz 2023 Annual Meeting and we're enjoying this beautiful garden at the Maison Latin Amerique and the weather's holding out so far.
00:19
Enjoying this? I'm really delighted to welcome Matthew Baldwin, Deputy Director General for the EU Commission, who's joined us and gave a great keynote speech.
00:27
And of course, Andrea Stagga, Vice President of the International Gas Union.
00:32
Fantastic.
00:32
So, gents, your thoughts.
00:35
First of all, Andrea, what have you thought of the gathering so far? It's been, let's say, a confirmation of last year, a good event I was attending.
00:43
So, so far, so good.
00:46
I hope my contribution will increase.
00:47
Yeah.
00:48
About to get even better!
But yeah, it's good conversation because I think we are in a very good mood in order to have the right elements to pop up in, let's say, conversation mode, which is not confrontation mode.
01:03
So it's very, very good.
01:05
And last year, of course, I mean, Matthew, you weren't here last year, of course.
01:07
But last year, Andrea, remember we were all in shock really at the situation created by Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
01:14
And now we've had time to digest, react and we've put in place processes.
01:19
The Commission have been very proactive.
01:21
Matthew, your speech, you were saying how impressed you were of the spirit of cooperation that you've seen.
01:25
I mean that's your take away is, I guess is more of that to come, we need?
01:30
Yeah, we, we saw tremendous cooperation in the course of last year in the European Union to deal with an amazing situation.
01:36
Yes.
01:36
And I think the Member States reacted amazingly.
01:40
We passed a great number of important tools such as demand reductions, such as the energy platform, which I have the honor to, to run, yeah, to address this crisis together.
01:52
But I'd like to take up that theme you mentioned of the, you know, beautiful cooperation.
01:56
Because here we are in this great group, the CEDIGAZ, they're discussing some quite tough issues.
02:03
And what I'm impressed by is your readiness to talk about this in the context of the green transition and decarbonization, which we all know has to be done, yes.
02:12
Yes, gas of course remains a transition fuel gas and will be phasing out and we do need to think about you know how we bring them on stream renewables. You're about to tell me we're going to cooperate less! But we have but it's the openness and this dialogue that we need and and it's going to be it's potentially tough for the gas situation.
02:30
I recognize that it's this openness which as a European I definitely support the fact that Europe has delivered a lot I think international cooperation.
02:41
Because of course some of the European actions had some negative reactions in other parts of the world, so not benefiting the global environment at all.
02:51
I mean you're talking about the super high energy prices and the impact on South Asia and I totally recognize.
02:56
So I mean it wasn't a, it wasn't a policy decision or anything.
03:01
We do recognize that we were lucky to be able to pay these high prices.
03:04
And the other point I think we have to consider possibly is the fact that we have to decarbonise fuels, umm, not to use less of these fuels because again globally speaking we have an energy demand increasing.
03:18
So again, taking different paths is very important to a knowledge because we have not a unique transition pathway.
03:26
Just to be back to cooperation, very important collaboration with other partners of outside Europe like North Africa, like Egypt.
03:40
But of course it's somehow perceived from a different perspective the need to reconcile also the financing from the European Union to progressively make these resources available.
03:52
Because again, in some constituencies you say from the European Union, we need more gas, but we are not loaning any euros for these projects that you are needing, so there is a bit of, let's say, tension there to be again addressed. Well, if you're referring to the Repower rulebook, we in fact are ready to lend in the Repower context, money for carbon infrastructure ,for gas infrastructure where that is really needed to meet security supply objectives.
04:24
Yeah, not grants in this context, but loans.
04:26
And so that remains possible.
04:28
And outside the European context, it's very difficult for banks like the European Investment Bank and others to to tackle that.
04:33
And I think we need to recognize it.
04:35
But I also want to recognize and welcome what you say about the the broader decarbonization agenda which the gas industry is ready to embrace.
04:44
We talked about this morning about what's going on on CCUS and the industrial strategy, which we've announced in the Net Zero industry and methane abatement, of course, taking it seriously, going to be hugely important and you're going to see that again at the COP meeting.
04:58
We need to make big strides to get more countries aligned on what we're doing in terms of measurement, monitoring and all the rest of the MRV agenda.
05:07
And taking the steps towards actual abatement.
05:09
Yeah, there's 250 billion cubic meters of gas according to the IMEO, which is wasted.
05:14
Extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah, So we need to get at it.
05:18
Low hanging fruits as we say, yeah, there are to be absolutely managed, which is one of these, yeah.
05:24
Yeah.
05:24
So I think the industry is delivering.
05:27
Of course we have to somehow.
05:31
Again, back to the cooperation internationally to avoid the multiplication of so many initiatives to tackle the same problem because otherwise we are not counting them in the proper way and measuring.
05:42
We're running out of acronyms sometimes.
05:44
No, no, I know.
05:44
Well, you know, the European Union is very creative this way.
05:48
So I would welcome some thoughts also in terms of global, let's say, monetization of these initiatives because it is important to avoid the fragmentation of initiatives separate.
06:02
Gentlemen, thank you so much indeed for your time.
06:04
We're looking forward to the rest of the day.
06:06
Plenty more to come after the break.
06:08
Thanks very much indeed.
06:09
Thank you.
06:09
Thank you.