In 2016, the 19th Annual General Meeting of the IBC was held. For the first time, the meeting was held in an international format. The event was attended by 96 companies from 27 countries, including representatives of companies from China, Bolivia, and Vietnam.
The forum was held with the support of the Senior sponsoring member, Gazprom, in the famous Tavrichesky Palace in St. Petersburg on May 26-27, 2016. The opening ceremony was attended by Mr. G. Poltavchenko, Governor of St. Petersburg.
On the first day of the forum there was a grand opening of the auto rally "Blue Corridor - 2016: Amber Route", which was organized in the framework of the IBC project "LNG in transport in Eastern Europe". The rally took place from May 26 to June 10, 2016, around the Baltic Sea through the territory of Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. As part of the rally, roundtables on "Using LNG as Fuel for Ship Bunkering" were held in the cities of Tallinn, Gdansk, Rostock, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Turku. Sergey Kogogin, General Director of Kamaz and Mr. Fernando Dario Salinas Fernandez, Director of the Executive Body for NGV Fuel under the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy of Bolivia took part in the opening ceremony of the motor rally.
The international conference entitled "Cooperation in the Energy Sector as a Stabilizing Factor for the Global Economy" was chaired by Alexander Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee of Gazprom. The conference was opened by Dr. A. Miller, Chairman of the Management Committee of Gazprom and President of the IBC. He briefly outlined the current situation in the global energy sector and stressed the importance of cooperation in this area. Mr. Paul Corcoran, CFO of the Nord Stream 2 AG, Mr. K. Schaefer, Chairman of the Management Board of Uniper SE, Mr. K. Blum, Executive Vice President of Schneider Electric Industries SAS, Mr. Aiden Wu, Director General of Huawei Russia spoke during the conference.
In 2016, IBC launched the social project "Youth Day: Dialogue of Generations", which is currently continuing to develop successfully. The project was presented by the Working Committee "Human Resources". "Youth Day: Dialogue of Generations" is an informational and educational platform for transferring current knowledge about the energy business, its purpose is to unite representatives of major energy companies and the youth audience of leading universities in different countries to organize a direct dialogue and discuss the prospects of the gas industry.
An important event in 2016 was the establishment of the Eighth Working Committee "Modern Technologies and Promising Projects of the Oil and Gas Industry" chaired by Dr. V. Markelov, Member of the Board of Directors, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee of Gazprom. The task of the new Working Committee is to identify priority technologies and develop advanced approaches to uniquely complex and significant projects.
