Wood Mackenzie 2021 Research Excellence Awards

In 2021 our global analysts created an outstanding body of research, putting a unique angle on everything from Covid-19 and COP26 through the recovery of commodity markets and rising geopolitical risk. It’s time to celebrate our team’s successes with our annual Research Excellence awards.

This year, six reports – from a pool of strong contenders – stood out as being truly representative of the compelling and timely analysis our clients need. Bringing together the work of more than sixteen contributors, they display the innovative thinking, commitment and perception that makes Wood Mackenzie’s research so compelling.

Alongside our traditional award honours for Best Insights, Best Core Reports and the Chairman’s Award for alignment with our cutting-edge Lens platform, we’ve added another award category in 2021 – the Horizons Award. Horizons is our monthly thought leadership series where we explore the complex world of the energy transition through crucial insights, new perspectives, and bold forecasts.

Harriet McGann, VP, Editorial Integrity and I are proud and delighted to present the Wood Mackenzie 2021 Research Excellence award winners.

Insights

Steel’s roadmap to decarbonisation (July 2021)

Mihir Vora, Mingming Zhang, Alex Griffiths

Steel is responsible for 7% of global CO2 emissions. This industry needs to decarbonise if the world is going to achieve a two-degree warming pathway aligned to the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

In this insight, the team explored an alternative scenario, beyond our base case, whereby steel follows a two-degree warming pathway. The challenge is immense. Read the report and decide if you believe steel can follow the AET 2.0 pathway.

Diving deep into Brazil’s mid-life pre-salt fields (December 2021)

Kuy Hun Koh Yoo, Luiz Hayum, Marcelo De Assis, Juliana Teixeira Froes Miguez

Brazil's three most mature pre-salt fields – Tupi, Iracema and Sapinhoá – entered their decline phase in 2021. With 24 billion barrels of oil in place and 10% of that volume recovered, their mid-life production performance merited deeper analysis.

Taking advantage of over ten years of production data, we applied well-by-well decline curve analysis and a stochastic approach to forecast production and valuation for the three fields.

Get a complimentary copy of this insight.

Core reports

Carbon capture and storage: how far can costs fall? (September 2021)

Mhairidh Evans

Scaling up carbon capture and storage (CCS) is vital to achieving net zero by 2050. But the costs associated with it are high. Why is it so expensive? And how far can costs fall? These are the questions addressed in our first proprietary view on the costs of CCS.

Read the article to learn more, and access a complimentary extract.

Low carbon fuels: charting the winners and losers in the energy transition (September 2021)

Maria Yee

New energy technologies, especially around hydrogen-based fuels, are gaining traction. Investment into new energy is heating up. News and industry are inundated with messages of the latest and greatest solutions.

This report aimed to cut through the noise and present readers with a baseline understanding for each key low carbon fuel, broadly classified into biofuels, hydrogen-based alternative fuels and hydrogen-based conventional fuels (e-fuels).

Find out more about our Energy Transition Service.

Chairman’s Award

Tight oil cost inflation: explaining 2021 and forecasting 2022 (December 2021)

Nathan Nemeth, Ryan Duman, Andrew Thorburn

How high could Oilfield Service pricing go in 2022? Which bottlenecks of 2021 have extended into this year?

In this report, the team took our detailed Lower 48 onshore cost models and produced a series of detailed graphics to showcase how dynamic drilling and completions pricing will be in 2022. They forecasted cost-push and demand-pull impacts of items like diesel, tubulars, rigs, completion crews, proppant and labour.

The report explored where the shortages were and what exploration and production companies can combat through price negotiations and operational changes, and how slashed maintenance budgets could unfold.

Visit our store to access the report.

Horizons Award

Reversal of fortune: oil and gas prices in a 2-degree world (April 2021)

Ann-Louise Hittle, Erik Mielke, Massimo Di-Odoardo, Alan Gelder

What's the future for the oil and gas industry should the world crank up its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement? The implications for the oil and gas industry are profound.

Under our accelerated energy transition scenario (AET-2) to 2050, the energy market would be rapidly electrified and the most polluting hydrocarbons squeezed out. Prices would come under pressure as demand falls and, in a ‘Copernican revolution’, the traditional relationship between oil and gas prices would be turned upside down.

Read the April 2021 edition of Horizons to find out more about our AET-2 scenario, why not all hydrocarbons are created equal – and how the industry must adapt to survive.

Honourable mentions

With so much quality research being produced it was very hard to whittle our list down to the winners. The following reports also earned a spot as honourable mentions, in no particular order:

• US solar to expand 44% under an extended ITC (Michelle Davis, Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Bryan White, Xiaojing Sun)
• CCS: upstream's commercial conundrum (Angus Rodger, Jessica Brewer)
• Federal leases and permits: how much could tight oil shrink? (Pablo Prudencio)
• Geothermal: state of the market 2021 (Prakash Sharma, Andrew Latham)
• Global gas investment horizon to 2032 (Kateryna Filippenko, Massimo Di-Odoardo, Kristy Kramer, Giles Farrer, Valery Chow, Eduardo Seraphim, Lucy Cullen, Dulles Wang, Fraser Carson, Stephen O'Rourke, Henrique Anjos, Evgeniya Mezentseva)

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