OGDCL Sees 16% Profit Decline in Q1 FY25 Amid Lower Sales and Production Challenges

on 25/10/2024

The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL), Pakistan’s largest oil and gas exploration firm, reported a significant 16% decline in profit for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, attributing the decrease to reduced sales volumes and fluctuating production levels. Despite ongoing efforts to streamline costs, the decline in revenue has had a noticeable impact on the company’s overall profitability.

Financial Performance and Revenue Decline

OGDCL’s latest financial report highlighted the challenges the company faced due to lower production and sales. Revenue from operations decreased significantly year-on-year, as oil and gas sales fell below expected levels amid shifting market demand. This sales dip coincided with a drop in the company’s average daily production, adding to its revenue concerns. In response to market fluctuations, OGDCL has aimed to reduce operational expenses to cushion the impact of declining revenue on profit margins. However, these measures could not fully counterbalance the significant drop in sales volume.

Market Factors and Industry Impact

The company’s performance was also affected by external market pressures, including global shifts in energy demand, fluctuating commodity prices, and supply chain constraints impacting the oil and gas sector worldwide. These conditions have created an unpredictable business environment, impacting production and sales targets not only for OGDCL but also for industry players across the globe. The lower-than-anticipated revenue aligns with similar challenges faced by the industry, as companies continue to adapt to evolving energy markets and demand patterns.

Focus on Cost Optimization and Future Strategy

As part of its response to the challenging market conditions, OGDCL has prioritized operational efficiency and cost control, focusing on optimizing its exploration and production processes. The company has expressed a commitment to adjusting its business strategy to adapt to the volatility of the oil and gas sector, which has become increasingly influenced by both regional and global economic trends. Despite short-term profitability challenges, OGDCL aims to strengthen its position through continued investments in efficiency and sustainable growth strategies.

This performance review reflects the broader challenges within Pakistan’s oil and gas sector, as companies strive to meet demand while adapting to the pressures of an evolving global energy landscape.

FE secures $405M to speed development of 100-hour battery

on 24/10/2024

Form Energy, , a company that is beginning to produce a longer-lasting alternative to lithium batteries, hit a milestone this month with an announcement of $405 million in funding.
The money will allow Form to speed up manufacturing at its first factory in Weirton, West Virginia, and continue research and development.
Manufacturing long-duration energy storage at a commercial scale is seen as essential for lowering carbon emissions that are causing climate change, because it makes clean energy available when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
“I’m incredibly proud of how far our team has come in scaling our iron-air battery technology,” Mateo Jaramillo, CEO of Form Energy, said.
Investment company T. Rowe Price led the funding. GE Vernova, a spin-off of General Electric’s energy businesses, and several venture capital firms were also involved.
“With this new funding … we’re ready to accelerate multi-day battery deployments to meet the rising demand for a cleaner and more reliable grid. I’m grateful for our team’s hard work and the trust our partners have placed in us as we push toward our mission of building energy storage for a better world.”
Lithium batteries typically last four hours. Form is one of many companies pursuing entirely different chemistries. Its batteries use iron, water and air and are able to store energy for 100 hours, meaning if they work at scale, they could bridge a period of several days without sunlight or wind. Iron is also one of the most abundant elements on Earth, which the company says helps make this technology affordable and scalable.
In collaboration with Great River Energy, the company broke ground on its first commercial battery installation in Cambridge, Minnesota in August. It’s expected to come online in 2025 and will store extra energy that can be used during times of higher electricity demand.
Other Form Energy batteries in Minnesota, Colorado and California are expected to come online next year. There are projects in New York, Georgia and Virginia set for 2026.
To date, Form Energy has raised more than $1.2 billion from investors.
The last line of this story has been corrected to reflect that the $1.2 billion raised so far is only from investors, not from any government entities.

Green energy from sea: A self-powered wave sensor, novel biofuel, improved catalytic conversion

on 24/10/2024

Green fields are opening around the world as researchers make inroads into improving efficiencies in new and emerging sustainable vehicles as well as a novel biofuel and power generation from the sea.
Flinders University scientists have recently published results from three different studies—targeting potential methods and future technologies to capture ocean wave power efficiently, produce marine microalgae biofuel and improve catalytic conversion in engines.
In the first study, nanotechnology experts at Flinders University, including Professor Youhong Tang and Ph.D. Steven Wang, with Chinese colleagues, have developed a novel wave-sensing device which is self-powered by harvesting energy from ocean waves.
The latest results, published in Device, feature a hybrid self-powered wave sensor (HSP-WS) prototype, consisting of an electromagnetic generator and a triboelectric nanogenerator.
“The test results show that HSP-WS has sufficient sensitivity to detect even 0.5 cm amplitude changes of ocean waves,” says Ph.D. candidate Yunzhong (Steven) Wang, from Professor Tang’s research group, who is based at Flinders University’s Tonsley future energy hub in Adelaide.
Professor Tang says that “the data obtained from HSP-WS can be used to fill up the current gap in the wave spectrum which can improve ocean wave energy harvesting efficiency.”
Ocean wave amplitude is a key parameter in the wave spectrum. The current wave spectrum does not support detailed wave data for wave amplitudes below 0.5 m. Common radar-based ocean data sensors struggle to monitor low-amplitude waves because the measured wave amplitude is often concealed by environmental noise.
Furthermore, the researchers say that low-amplitude-wave energy harvesters lack proper guidance for optimal placement, which significantly affects their energy-harvesting efficiency.
Meanwhile, nanoscale material scientist, Matthew Flinders Professor Tang, has joined forces with aquaculture expert Professor Jianguang Qin and other Flinders University researchers to experiment with a new way to boost production of fast-growing, sustainable microalgae for biofuel or other feedstock.
“Mass production of microalgae is a research focus owing to their promising aspects for sustainable food, biofunctional compounds, nutraceuticals, and biofuel feedstock,” says Professor Tang.
“For the first time, this study was able to enhance algal growth and lipid accumulation simultaneously, producing essential biomolecules for the third and fourth-generation feedstock for biofuel.” Their article is published in Small.
The novel approach creates an effective light spectral shift for photosynthetic augmentation in a green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, by using an aggregation-induced emission (AIE) photosensitizer.
Professor of Aquaculture Jian Qin says industry-scale microalgae culture for lipid and biomass production is still a challenge.
“However, microalgae-derived polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) remain a promising alternative to stock-limited fossil fuels for the recent price hike and future demand and for minimizing carbon emissions with 10 to 50 times higher efficiency than terrestrial plants. PUFA also have health-promoting functions for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications,” he says.
Another research group at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering has published a paper in Plasma about a promising new nanotechnology technique for more efficient use of fuels.
“The need for sustainable energy solutions is steering research towards green fuels,” says Associate Professor in Chemistry Melanie MacGregor, from Flinders University. “One promising approach involves electrocatalytic gas conversion, which requires efficient catalyst surfaces.”
“In this study, we developed and tested a plasma-deposited hydrophobic octadiene (OD) coating with the potential to increase the yield of electrocatalytic reactions,” she says.
“Our findings indicate that these nano-films, combined with micro-texturing, could improve the availability of reactant gases at the catalyst surface while limiting water access. This approach holds promise to inform future development of catalyst materials for the electrocatalytic conversion of nitrogen and carbon dioxide into green fuels.”

Holographic 3D printing has potential to revolutionize multiple industries

on 24/10/2024

Researchers at Concordia have developed a novel method of 3D printing that uses acoustic holograms. And they say it’s quicker than existing methods and capable of making more complex objects.
The process, called holographic direct sound printing (HDSP), is described in a recent article in the journal Nature Communications. It builds on a method introduced in 2022 that described how sonochemical reactions in microscopic cavitations regions—tiny bubbles—create extremely high temperatures and pressure for trillionths of a second to harden resin into complex patterns.
Now, by embedding the technique in acoustic holograms that contain cross-sectional images of a particular design, polymerization occurs much more quickly. It can create objects simultaneously rather than voxel-by-voxel.
In order to retain the fidelity of the desired image, the hologram remains stationary within the printing material. The printing platform is attached to a robotic arm, which moves it based on a pre-programmed algorithm-designed pattern that will form the completed object.
Muthukumaran Packirisamy, a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering, led the project. He believes this can improve printing speed by up to 20 times while at the same time using less energy.
“We can also change the image while the operation is under way,” he says. “We can change shapes, combine multiple motions and alter materials being printed. We can make a complicated structure by controlling the feed rate if we optimize the parameters to get the required structures.”
A technological leap
According to the researchers, the precise control of acoustic holograms allows it to store information of multiple images in a single hologram. This means multiple objects can be printed at the same time at different locations within the same printing space.
As a result, acoustic holography will be a launching pad for innovation across any number of fields: it can be used to create complex tissue structures, localized drug and cell delivery systems and advanced tissue engineering. Real-world applications include the creation of new forms of skin grafts that can enhance healing and improved drug delivery for therapies that require specific therapeutic agents at specific sites.
He adds that, as soundwaves can penetrate opaque surfaces, HSDP can be used to print inside a body or behind solid material. This can be helpful in repairing damaged organs or delicate parts located deep within an airplane.
The researchers believe that HDSP has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting technology. He compares it to the advancement light-based 3D printing technology saw with the evolution from stereolithography, in which a laser is used to harden a single point of resin into a solid object, to digital light processing, which cures entire layers of resin simultaneously.
“You can imagine the possibilities,” he says. “We can print behind opaque objects, behind a wall, inside a tube or inside the body. The technique that we already use and the devices that we use have already been approved for medical applications.”

The Potential of Circular Economy in Revitalizing Pakistan’s Textile Sector

on 24/10/2024

CIRCULAR & LINEAR ECONOMY
The linear economy follows a “take-make-dispose” model, where resources are extracted, used to make products, and discarded as waste, leading to high resource consumption and environmental harm. In contrast, the circular economy focuses on “reduce, reuse, recycle”, aiming to keep products and materials in circulation, minimize waste, and regenerate natural systems.
In the linear model, waste is a by-product, whereas the circular model designs out waste by promoting durability, recycling, and renewable energy use. The circular approach is more sustainable, generating long-term economic growth, reducing environmental impact, and creating new job opportunities through resource efficiency.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY & T PAKISTAN’S TEXTILE
Pakistan’s textile industry is crucial to its economy, contributing nearly 60% of total exports and employing around 40% of the industrial workforce. The sector accounts for 8.5% of the country’s GDP and plays a major role in foreign exchange earnings. However, it faces sustainability challenges like resource-intensive production, excessive waste, and pollution.
Key Circular Economy Opportunities with Economic Benefits:
Sustainable Cotton Farming:
○ Pakistan is the 5th largest producer of cotton globally, and moving towards organic and regenerative farming can reduce costs associated with chemical inputs and water usage, improving long-term productivity and sustainability.
Textile Waste Recycling:
○ Pakistan generates thousands of tons of post-industrial waste annually. Establishing large-scale textile recycling facilities could create new business opportunities, reduce imports of virgin materials, and meet global demand for recycled textiles, which is growing by 8% annually.
Zero-Waste Design and Eco-Friendly Materials:
○ By investing in zero-waste manufacturing techniques and using recycled or biodegradable materials, companies can save costs in raw material procurement. For example, using recycled polyester can cut costs by up to 30% compared to virgin polyester production.
Energy and Water Efficiency:
○ Implementing waterless dyeing or recycling wastewater could reduce water consumption by up to 50%, lowering operational costs. Similarly, adopting renewable energy sources like solar power could mitigate Pakistan’s chronic energy shortages and lower electricity expenses in factories.
Secondhand Markets and Repair Services:
○ Pakistan imports and processes large quantities of secondhand clothes, especially from Europe and North America. Expanding domestic markets for resale and refurbishment could create additional revenue streams and jobs in repair and upcycling industries.
Economic Benefits of Circular Practices:
● Cost Savings: Circular practices like recycling and energy efficiency can reduce production costs by up to 20%, boosting profit margins.
● New Markets: The global demand for sustainable fashion is projected to grow, opening new export opportunities for Pakistani textiles. Circular fashion could add $10-15 billion to the global economy by 2030, which Pakistan can tap into.
● Job Creation: Transitioning to a circular economy in textiles could create new jobs in recycling, repair, and material innovation sectors, potentially increasing employment by 10-15% in related fields.
Circular Economy Examples in Pakistan’s Textile Sector:
Soorty Enterprises: Implements recycling technologies and water-efficient dyeing to produce sustainable denim, reducing waste and water use.
Artistic Milliners: Focuses on water conservation, wastewater recycling, and renewable energy to minimize environmental impact.
Reon Energy Solutions: Provides solar power solutions for textile factories like Gul Ahmed, reducing carbon emissions and energy costs.
Lunda Bazaar: Pakistan’s thriving second hand clothing market, extends the life cycle of garments and reduces textile waste.
H&M Garment Collection Program: Allows consumers in Pakistan to recycle old clothes, promoting circular fashion and reducing textile waste.
Interloop Limited: Uses recycled cotton fibers in their hosiery products, cutting down on the need for virgin cotton.
Patagonia: Sources organic and fair trade cotton from Pakistan, supporting sustainable farming practices.
Green Garment Factories Program: Helps textile manufacturers adopt energy-efficient and waste-minimization practices to boost sustainability.