Jorge Lanza, CEO of Exolum, receives La Vanguardia at the company’s headquarters amid the noise of fire alarms thundering around us. False alarm. This ex-director of BP who has been in charge of the old Spanish monopoly for more than seven years never loses his smile. “It is his usual style even in the most difficult moments,” say his collaborators.
Beyond the radical name change, is there anything left in Exolum from the old Campsa, later also called CLH?
There’s still a lot. The know-how of a company that has been transporting hydrocarbons for more than 100 years has made us the most efficient in Europe. Name changes are the result of our evolution. From the former monopoly, Campsa, to the privatization, Compañía Logística de Hidrocarburos (CLH). We realized that we were doing very well in Spain and we bet on internationalization first and diversification later. Together with hydrocarbon logistics, we are committed to logistics for other dangerous liquids, such as chemicals. We bought a company called Inter Terminal that had to be renamed and we thought that CLH no longer responded to our new reality, and that’s how Exolum came to be.
In the last presentation of results they placed great emphasis on the contribution of the international business. Is the business in Spain in decline?
The years of the pandemic were very hard because our business is not regulated like other energies and we suffered a drop in demand. The main part of our income continues to be fuel logistics. In the case of aviation, it will not recover pre-pandemic levels until 2023. Road transport, as planned, will not do so and will continue to decrease. In any case, the company closed 2022 with a 31% increase in profits, up to 280 million euros, and a gross operating result of 533 million euros in 2022, 13.2% more. Having said this, what we want is to be relevant in the energy transition by developing the infrastructures that will be required. Here, it is true, more opportunities arise outside of Spain.
What is your role in that transition?
We are not going to produce the new fuels, but we are going to transport them, we are going to store them, and that is going to require new pipelines, deposits… These are the infrastructures that are required in the world and for which we are betting . For example, we are investing 120 million euros in Peru to adapt its main airports.
Do you envision a world without oil?
I don’t see a world without oil any time soon. In the long term, of course it will. We must understand that we are in an energy transition, not in a revolution. The clearest example is that of aviation. Neither Airbus nor Boeing have a plane in the pipeline in the next 30 years that will fly on something other than kerosene. They do have aircraft that will be increasingly efficient and what will evolve are fuels, which are increasingly cleaner and more decarbonized. The most efficient way to advance in this decarbonization is biofuels.
Well, it seems that the Spanish and European governments are betting more on hydrogen.
It is difficult to envision the technology that will prevail. Most likely, there will not be just one and that electrification, biofuels, and hydrogen will coexist. We are doing tests on all of them, including hydrogen. But we must not forget that the objective is to reduce emissions, and in that hydrogen still holds promise. The hydrogen plane will arrive, but neither you nor I will see it. Much technology remains to be advanced. Biofuels can now be used and we are doing it in aviation with the SAF, which can be used in the same engines and infrastructures.
How do you assess, then, the commitment to build specific infrastructures for hydrogen such as H2Med?
It has many challenges. There are many projects with hydrogen, but they are all production. And the demand? Now there is no demand, and that is what must be encouraged. The new National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (Pniec) has forgotten this. Now hydrogen is not profitable and for it to be, incentives are needed. It is the same thing that happens with electric cars. Where they are making the most progress is in countries like the United Kingdom, where they have most opted to subsidize the purchase to compensate for the high cost of acquisition, which is a great handicap, and the scarce recharging infrastructure. The same thing happens with hydrogen, demand needs to be encouraged. In any case, the demand that I see profitable is that of proximity. The one that can be generated in plants close to the big industries and, if transport is needed, maritime routes by ship like the ones that Repsol or Cepsa are opening seem to me more viable than such an expensive underwater infrastructure.
