The Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) announced that the 2nd Gulf Metrology Forum “Metrology and Energy” will be held in Doha, Qatar from the 4th till the 6th of December 2017, under the patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Interior.
The Gulf Metrology Forum is the second roll out of the highly successful GMF held in 2015 The 1st GMF had resulted in important recommendations put together by the participants: they unanimously agreed to promote metrology infrastructure and support Qatar and other countries in their efforts in the field of energy measurement and testing. These efforts are indeed necessary to guarantee an efficient use of natural resources, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and at the same time limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The 2nd GMF will be held in collaboration with Qatar’s Ministry of Energy and Industry, Qatar General Organization for Standards and Metrology (QS), the GCC Standardisation Organization (GSO) and GULFMET. The Forum’s main target group is officials and technicians working in public and private sector laboratories, staff of academic institutions and testing and calibration laboratories, local metrology institutions, researchers and interested parties.
In light of GOIC’s close interaction with energy and industry sector in the GCC, the metrology sector is expected to play an even bigger role in the Gulf energy sector, particularly with the increasing focus on modern methods and new technologies in various energy fields.
The 2nd GMF aims at strengthening communication between the industrial sector, government agencies, education institutions and metrology research and development laboratories. It will also present the latest measurement and testing techniques in the field of energy and provide an opportunity for metrology entrepreneurs and GCC decision-makers to communicate and interact. In fact, GCC countries succeeded in carrying out major steps forward on the path of economic growth over the last few years. This great success would have remained impossible without the efficient implementation of economic development plans.
Moreover, metrology in the energy sector is important in this part of the world in light of GCC’s major influence in the field of energy based on high oil reserves and production and exporting capacities. It is expected that GCC countries in general will remain at the heart of future developments on the global oil market.
In this regard, most organisations and institutions specialising in energy expect that most of the global future energy needs will be fulfilled through fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) for decades to come. In fact, it is predicted that the share of fossil fuels will remain 80% of the total energy sources market in the future. Oil and gas alone are expected to represent 51% of the total energy sources used by 2035.
Moreover, GCC countries have approximately 40% of the total global oil reserves and about 24% of the total gas reserves. The abundance of this valuable commodity allowed countries to benefit from revenues to put together ambitious and sustainable economic development plans. Energy efficiency systems are perceived as added value to these countries’ economies that continue to implement rationalisation and energy efficiency policies to reduce unnecessary wastes and cut expenditures.
Demand on energy in Gulf countries is expected to grow in the coming decades, which encouraged governments and companies alike to invest in alternative energy sources. Energy efficiency is still low in the GCC compared to international standards. Therefore, GCC countries took important measures to introduce early-stage researches and identify objectives of using alternative energy sources. Plans are currently being implemented all over the GCC to adhere to the determined alternatives to achieve energy and renewable energy results.
The 2nd GMF aims at assessing techniques, measurements, benchmarking needs and existing regional capacities, increasing awareness among concerned government entities in the field of infrastructure technologies, encouraging regional and international partnerships to exchange expertise and best practices to optimise the benefit from renewable energy, greenhouse gas measurements, pollutants, energy efficiency, distribution networks and determining measurement needs to further spread renewable energy techniques.
The impact of metrology can be measured through the variety of energy sources used in GCC countries. In fact, sectors that benefit from metrology are oil, gas, electricity, desalination and other renewable energy sources like solar and wind that need further development to have a tangible impact on demand. In addition to that, metrology can boost current efforts deployed by concerned parties in GCC countries by introducing more efficient measurement systems and tools preserving energy.
In order to lay the foundations for the sustainable management of natural resources, the forum will address various topics related to the measurement used in the production of energy of all kinds and in the field of renewable energy and applications of gas flow and recent developments in energy efficiency, environment, climate and measurement in education and nanotechnology metrology
The Forum will target government and private laboratories, relevant institutions and companies, ministries of commerce and industry, ministries of environment and industrial companies operating in the areas of oil, gas, energy and petrochemicals, in addition to universities, scientific research institutions and international organisations specialised in measurement and calibration.