Professionals from Ancap, Axion Energy, Chevron, ENAP, Equión, Oldelval, Pemex, Petroamazonas EP, Pluspetrol and YPF participated in the Workshop "Climate Risks and Adaptation: Challenges and Opportunities in the Oil and Gas Sector" held September 6 and 7 at Torre YPF, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The event was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Argentina, the Argentine Business Council for Sustainable Development and IPIECA.

The purpose of the workshop was to share information and tools to support adaptation to climate change and management of climate risks in the oil and gas industry.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) considers climate change as one of the five major risks for mankind in the next ten years.

At the global level, several changes have already occurred with respect to the pre-industrial era: Ocean temperatures have increased, the ice layer at the poles has decreased, the snow layer and the frequency of snowfalls have decreased, the sea level has risen 17 centimeters, and the temperature of the earth’s surface has increased by 0.85°C, among others.

The Paris Agreement reached in 2015 aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would considerably reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. (See report on the following link: https://arpel.org/library/publication/457/

The energy sector plays a strategic role in this issue in terms of reduction and prevention of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and in terms of their impacts.

As stated during the Workshop, companies in the sector are incorporating climate risks in their evaluation matrices. However, there are still many challenges as regards adaptation to climate change.

Climate risk maps and vulnerability areas, scientific advances on emissions and scenarios for the future, and the presentation of two climate vulnerability tools used by YPF (Argentina) and by Equión (Colombia) were some of the topics addressed during the technical meeting.