On October 4, the 7th St. Petersburg International Gas Forum ran "Youth Day: the Dialogue of Generations", an event that has already become a tradition. Gazprom, ExpoForum-International and the Higher Economic School of St. Petersburg State Economic University were the organisers of the event.
"Youth day: the Dialogue of Generations" is a unique event where students from different countries can listen to expert opinions of the gas industry specialists, work with each other in a workshop format and lead their team to victory in a case-tournament. The event is running three days. The central part of it is the case-tournament, in which more than 200 students from all over the world take part. The topic of this year's case-tournament was "The Future of LNG." It bears reminding that the case-tournament was conducted in two stages: at the first stage, a remote one, the registered teams had to send the solution of a task before September 24, and at the on-site stage those six best teams (from Germany, the Netherlands, Bolivia, France, Russia, and China), whose presentations were selected in the correspondence round, were presenting their projects.
Marcel Krammar on behalf of the international committee of judges congratulated the participants of the on-site stage, wished them good luck at the presentation, and also stressed the importance of engaging with coming-up professionals, emphasizing that we need a fresh vision to decide the future of the industry.
At the on-site stage, the TullpEn team representing the Netherlands made its presentation stating that development and implementation of LNG technologies, as illustrated by new solutions of Shell (one of the world's LNG sector leaders), is the key vector for future development. "Ours is the country with a very dynamic economy. The state is very concerned about environmental pollution and about 60% of industrial enterprises use coal. Economic and geographic characteristics of the country do not allow the construction of a gas pipeline, and the only environmentally friendly and safe solution is liquefied gas, – the team's experts made a point.
In their turn, the German ABC team have brought to the forefront the development and exploration of the Asia-Pacific region as a high-priority area for the same Shell. "Japan and South Korea are trying to cut down on the use of nuclear fuel, looking upon LNG as an effective alternative," – pointed out the students.
The event also featured the Russian team BigFut, suggesting we should go back to basics: "Algeria was the first to start liquefying gas, but up to this day they are not fully capable of providing it to all potential consumers in Africa". They also stressed the need to allocate additional funding for the development of gas infrastructure in the region.
The solution suggested by the French team, Gus Gusslers, was to focus on priority development regions. In addition to the Asia-Pacific region, the students mentioned the promising North American region, which has already had an extensive history of development of this sector and which, the French team thinks, is bound to make LNG the symbol of a stable, environmentally friendly and pollutant-free future. "The sun does not always shine, and the winds do not always blow, – explained the participants, implying that liquefied gas is the guarantor of energy in the future.
Representatives of the Chinese team WePower have chosen their country as the main area for the future growth, with plenteous support from the government and developed infrastructure in place.
After all the teams have made their presentation, the jury retired for deliberations to select the best project. Before announcing the results, the contestors played a small blitz game, in which representatives of the Chinese team took the lead.
The results of the case-tournament were as follows: the Chinese team took the third place, the second was the team from Germany, and the winner was the French Gus Gusslers.