Crude Oil Corridors
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
POLITECNICO DI TORINO Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Ingegneria per l’Ambiente e il Territorio Tesi di Laurea Magistrale Modelling the role of oil in the Italian energy security Relatore Candidato Prof. Stefano Lo Russo Eleonora Desogus Co-relatore Prof. Ettore Bompard Anno Accademico 2019/2020 This thesis has been developed at EST@energycenter, Politecnico di Torino 2 3 ABSTRACT It has become clear that the present energy paradigm is not sustainable anymore and it is necessary to find new ways to comply with global energy demand avoiding GHGs emissions (leading to global warming and consequently climate change phenomena) and air pollutant emissions (causing negative impacts on human health). Therefore, in the last years several international agreements were signed in order to counteract the climate change effects and to promote more sustainable energy policies supporting the so-called “energy transition”. The aim is to move from traditional energy systems based on fossil fuels to an energy mix based on renewables. Despite this need for de-carbonization, developing countries still push demand of fossil resources. Developed countries like Italy, on the contrary, promote sustainability-oriented policies. Indeed, renewable resources experienced a constant increase in their penetration during last 10 years and are expected to become the key commodities in the energy mix in the long term. Nevertheless, in the short mid-term, even in these countries fossil fuels still play a relevant role. In particular, oil still maintains a crucial role in transport sector. As well, Italian energy system is still dependent on fossil fuels: oil and natural gas accounted respectively for 34,0% and 34,5% of total primary energy supply in 2018. Furthermore, due to the unavailability of internal oil reserves, Italy is a net importer from oil producing countries such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Thus, Italy is strongly subjected to geopolitical dynamics involving these countries and is more vulnerable to oil supply disruption. The relevance of energy security requires the availability of science-based models and tools for supporting the policy-decision making, in order to assess the impacts of possible contingencies and the mid-/long-terms effects of alternative mitigation strategies. The aim of this thesis is to develop and implement a new model for quantification of the total energy risk related to Italian oil suppliers. For this purpose, an overall analysis of the oil trade is performed through the collection and processing of data from different open-source and purchased databases. Then all oil suppliers were identified and oil flows from the oil fields to the national entry points were tracked. Once known Italian entry points, the oil pathways were traced backwards through a georeferred mapping of both captive and open-sea corridors (including refineries, ports, pipelines and maritime routes). Moreover, further analysis was focused both on technical characteristics of oil pipelines, transport infrastructures and geopolitical risk of crossed countries. This multi-layer approach to risk analysis allows to provide a complete vision of the interconnections between national security and the geopolitical stability of supply countries. Furthermore, ad hoc metrics and integrated indicators were defined in order to provide an overall measure of energy risk of oil supply. Finally, several scenarios were built and analysed with the aim of comparing the impact of possible adverse events (e.g., unavailability of a given infrastructure, emergence of geopolitical tensions or commercial disputes) on national energy security in terms of supply risk. 4 5 Summary 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................8 1.1 OIL ROLE IN THE ENERGY TRANSITION 8 1.2 AIM OF THE THESIS: ANALYSIS OF SUPPLY OIL SECURITY IN ITALY 12 1.3 OUTLINE OF THE THESIS 13 2 ITALIAN ENERGY CONTEXT ......................................................................................................... 14 2.1 CHARACTERIZATION OF OIL SUPPLY 14 2.1.1 VALIDATION OF DATA PROVIDERS .................................................................................................. 15 2.2 OVERVIEW OF ITALIAN ENERGY CONSUMPTION 17 2.3 DOMESTIC CRUDE PRODUCTION AND PROVEN RESERVES 19 2.4 OIL IMPORT AND EXPORT 21 2.4.1 SHANNON INDEX ....................................................................................................................... 25 2.5 OIL INFRASTRUCTURES AND REFINERY ACTIVITY 29 3 RISK ASSESSMENT OF OIL SUPPLY .............................................................................................. 34 3.1 ENERGY RISK ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN OIL SUPPLY 34 3.2 GEOREFERENCING PROCESS 39 3.3 OPEN SEA CORRIDORS 42 3.3.1 MARITIME HAZARDS................................................................................................................... 44 3.3.2 QUANTIFICATION OF PROBABILITY OF FAILURE .................................................................................. 50 3.4 CAPTIVE CORRIDORS 56 3.4.1 CAPTIVE HAZARDS...................................................................................................................... 57 3.4.2 QUANTIFICATION OF PROBABILITY OF FAILURE .................................................................................. 59 3.5 EXTERNAL RISK QUANTIFICATION 60 3.5.1 ENERGY FLUX SORTING ............................................................................................................... 61 3.5.2 CORRIDORS GROUPING ............................................................................................................... 64 3.5.3 RESULTS OF RISK MODEL: CURRENT ITALIAN SITUATION ...................................................................... 66 4 IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF RISK SCENARIOS ................................................................................. 69 4.1 SCENARIOS DEFINITION 69 4.2 CORRIDOR AND CHOKEPOINT FAILURE 69 4.3 QUANTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL AND ACTUAL THREATS 72 5 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................ 80 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY AND DEFINITIONS...................................................................................... 81 6 APPENDIX B: CHARACTERIZATION OF CRUDES IMPORTED BY ITALY ................................................ 83 APPENDIX C: CHARACTERIZATION OF ITALIAN OIL INFRASTRUCTURE ............................................. 89 APPENDIX D: GEOPOLITICAL AND MARITIME SECURITY ASSESSMENT ............................................. 91 APPENDIX E: MATLAB CODE ............................................................................................................. 93 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................................... 94 7 1 Introduction This thesis is the result of the collaboration with Anolli Davide, student of the Polytechnic of Torino enrolled in the master course of Energetic and nuclear engineering. The combination between the Environmental and the Energy field allowed to perform a more thorough investigation of Italian energy security level and to develop a more comprehensive methodology for modelling energy risk related to Italian oil supply. Moreover, different backgrounds and personal skills enhanced development of a unique overall product. In particular, the collaboration supported the initial phase of data collection for Italian oil market characterisation and afterward on the theoretical development of the risk model. Davide managed the energy fluxes characterization and the processing of the model data. On the other hand, through my experience with GIS software, I dealt with georeferencing and characterization of all global infrastructure involved in Italian oil trade (not only Italian ports and refineries but also foreign ones). After that, I traced backwards open sea routes and captive corridors travelled by crude and petroleum products. Hence, I associated to each corridor and infrastructure corresponding information required to perform risk model. I selected the major corridor and grouped together routes with similar pathway whereas Davide performed energy flux sorting. Once succeeded to risk model development, we considered different scenarios and, consequently, different results. Finally, it should be point out that the general framework of the two thesis is different according to our personal master course. Davide has focused the attention on the role of oil in the energy sector, whereas I have analysed the oil trade from the point of view of the energy transition. 1.1 Oil role in the energy transition Global environmental issues such as atmospheric pollution, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation are caused by anthropic activities. It is proved by scientific evidences that global warming and atmospheric pollution are two serious problems related to the combustion of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, global energy and transport sector, still today, rely on fossil fuels even though it has become clear that actual energy paradigm is not sustainable anymore. In particular, energy sector is the main anthropogenic factor of climate change accounting for 62% of total CO2 [1] emissions and it is the leading cause of global air pollution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), which is intergovernmental body created