IIW White Paper

World gas reserves World oil reserves

Proved reserves at end 2004 Trillion cubic metres

Proved reserves at end 2004 Thousand million barrels

Middle East 733.9

Middle East 72.83

Europe & Eurasia 64.02

Europe & Eurasia 139.2

S. & Cent. America 101.2

Africa 14.06

Asia Pacific 14.21

S. & Cent. America 7.10

North America 7.32

Africa 112.2

North America 61.0

Asia Pacific 41.1

Figure 9.5 Distributions of oil and gas reserves (Reproduced courtesy: TWI Ltd)

9.1.2 Power - Fossil Every country, industrialised or not, has the obligation and is responsible for its own effort in improving the quality of life of its citizens without negatively impacting on the condition of the environment. Any successful developed or developing country relies on a steady and stable supply of electric power. Historically, the global power generation industry has been a notoriously bad performer with regard to preservation of the good health of the environment. Paradoxically, it’s also this sector of industry that can achieve large improvements to negative side effects through perceived modest adjustments to the way the business is conducted. Some of these include the introduction of gas conditioning plant to curb emissions of harmful species, changing to cleaner burning fuels, and more recently, by building new plant with increased efficiency by opting for supercritical or even ultra supercritical steam generating plant. Unfortunately, these adjustments usually come at a great increase in the cost of generated electricity, especially when erecting new power stations that includes recent advances in power generation technology. For the power generation industry moving forward to 2020 and beyond, aligning welding activity strategies will require careful evaluation and investigation of many factors that could play a major role. Promotion of techniques with reduced negative impact on the environment, efficient utilisation of refurbished existing assets and an intensive skills development programme are but a few of these. It is often alleged by both pessimists and realists that most of the engineering problems of the day have been solved already, and that from results for the majority of research projects more and more is reported on less and less. Notwithstanding this view, history has shown that there will always be room for improvement on finer details which if these improvements are promoted correctly and introduced in a cost effective way can make a difference to the bigger scheme of events. Technology Trends The power generation industry is no exception and potentially many improvements to current designs and technology can still be achieved through the introduction of novel welding and joining techniques. One such field were this industry appears to be a laggard is the use of solid state welding processes for the fabrication of power plant components. Benefits associated with this welding process are:

Superior weldment quality compared to traditional arc welding techniques. Simple equipment requiring relatively low levels of operator training. Reproducibility of welding parameters. Refurbishment of component damage previously considered not viable for weld repairs. Low impact on the environment with regard to generation of gases.

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Through Optimum Use and Innovation of Welding and Joining Technologies

Improving Global Quality of Life