The 16th Annual General Meeting of the EBC (now IBC) was held on 30-31 May 2013 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands at the invitation of the Nederlandse Gasunie and Royal Boskalis Westminster. The event was co-sponsored by Shell, ING Bank and South Stream Transport.
The event brought together over 370 delegates and guests from 25 OSCE member-states and was dedicated to “Development of LNG and its Impact on the European Gas Markets”. Mr. Jos de Groot, Director of Energy Markets, Ministry of Economy of the Netherlands, took part in the opening ceremony.
The conference was moderated by Mr. Lincoln Payton, Executive Committee member, BNP Paribas, and Mrs. Tatiana Mitrova, head of Oil and Gas Department at the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Dr. A. B. Miller, Gazprom, Mr. P. van Gelder, Nederlandse Gasunie, Mr. K. Schaefer, E.ON Global Commodities SE, Mr. P. Berdowski, Royal Boskalis Westminster, Dr. O. Lazare, Shell Russia were among the panel speakers.
In 2013 the EBC launched three projects. As part of the project “Secrets of Natural Gas for Schoolchildren” the Congress had issued a book about the properties of the natural gas in English and German. Another project – “Environmental Consequences of Shale Gas Production in Europe” was executed in the form of a comprehensive scientific analysis of shale gas production technologies in the U.S. and Canada to assess possible impact of large-scale development of shale gas fields on environment and population in Europe. Both projects were implemented by the “Industry and Construction” Working Committee (now “Industry, Innovation and Prospective Development”) and fully paid in 2014.
The “Ecology and Healthcare” Committee launched the “Bicycle – Ecology and Health” project to booster the environmental thinking and promote bicycles as universal eco-friendly means of transportation. In total 100 bicycles and numerous bike stands have been produced and installed in Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Russia. Furthermore, the project executives organized a bike-marathon and held a conference to promote the benefits of cycling for environment and human health . The project was implemented in March 2015.