Yury Kichigin, Founder of WNOGUSA, shares how the current state of the oil and gas industry, which is a significant contributor to CO2 emissions, can join the fight against climate change.
Yury Kichigin, Founder of WNOGUSA, is working towards implementing sustainable practices in the oil and gas industry. He is now sharing his thoughts on how both industries are contributing to the rise in global CO2 emissions and how they can begin to make the transition to sustainable operations as the fight against climate change carries on.
The topic of climate change and how to stop the continuous emission of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels has become a widely debated topic in the United States. What should be an issue that brings people together has become a politically divisive argument with people on both sides of the political aisle voicing their arguments for and against the implementation of sustainability in the oil and gas industry.
Aside from the issues coming from societal pressures towards sustainability, the oil and gas industry faces its own challenges in implementing sustainable practices. According to Kichigin, the oil and gas industry can become very volatile at any time as the prices are constantly fluctuating. Additional pressure comes from investors who want to put their money into a sustainable business, but Kichigin says the transition from traditional methods of obtaining oil and natural gas is expensive. Current technologies that are being developed for the industries like carbon capture and storage facilities are also expensive to be adopted and put into use.
Kichigin says there needs to be a bigger push towards the development of sustainable technologies that can help the oil and gas industries utilize renewable energy sources.
“We need to continue to develop new and existing sustainable technologies, so the costs can be brought down and the technologies can become scalable,” says Kichigin. “One of the great things I’ve experienced recently in the oilfield is the use of digital operations, and people are starting to realize they need to change because we can’t keep living the way we have with the amount of greenhouse gasses being emitted into the atmosphere.”
According to Kichigin, there are mixed perceptions on how people view oil and gas companies because they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and often cause environmental pollution but at the same time provide jobs to local communities and help grow the economy. Kichigin sees the oil and gas industry moving towards a more sustainable method of production through the use of electric power instead of relying on things like diesel fuel to power oil rigs.
Michigan has found that society needs to develop a way for the oil and gas industry to smoothly transition from burning fossil fuels to using renewable resources. He says we can’t just close down oil and gas companies because it’s such a big industry and contributes to not only jobs but the functioning of a healthy society. Furthermore, because oil and gas companies are so large, they have a great ability to put research, time and funding into sustainable practices.
He says there are already some incentives for this kind of smooth transition, which can be seen in the Inflation Reduction Act as it provides tax benefits for companies that begin adopting renewable resources and contribute to sustainability initiatives. With over 30 years of experience working in logistics for the oil and gas industries, Kichigin wants to combine his knowledge of supply chain logistics and sustainability to provide consultancy on the best ways to implement sustainable practices in both industries.
“We need to think about the future generations and the environment that will be left for them as they get older. If we start making the change now to truly investing in technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without completely dismantling the oil and gas industry, we’ll have a great opportunity to make significant gains in the fight against climate change,” says Kichigin.
