Seemingly indifferent to the fast expanding global environmental lobby that targets pushing back the production of plastics, international oil companies are reportedly positioning themselves to invest a mammoth US$500 billion in new petrochemical plants to increase production of the commodity.
The reported move by the oil companies would appear to suggest that they are confident that next week’s United Nations, Nairobi, Kenya forum which is seeking an outcome that will directly persuade governments to push for the cessation of production of single use plastics, will make little if any headway.
This development threatens to drive a further wedge between the ‘big players’ in the international oil & gas industry and global lobbyists, including some governments and environmental groups, who are backing the Nairobi meeting – which is expected to be attended by representatives of more than fifty member countries of the UN – to realise an outcome that will at least take the world closer to a ban on the production of single use plastics.
Plastics impose an estimated cost of $1,000 per tonne on account of the contribution that they make to air pollution, CO2 and through disposables’ collection costs. Over the years, there have been increasing calls for those costs to be shifted onto producers as a means a reducing whatever incentives might exist at this time for them to further increase the production of plastics. A staggering estimated 400 million metric tonnes of plastic is produced around the world each year.
The refinement of plastics is believed to emit an additional 184 to 213 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually and landfill sites to which discarded single-use plastics are sent account for over 15% of methane emissions.
Scientists and environmentalists who have enjoined the clarion call for a ban on single-use plastics, which are made from oil and gas, assert that the product is contributing alarmingly to carbon emissions, and next week’s high-profile Nairobi meeting will reportedly see all twenty-seven members of the European Union throw their collective weight behind a pact to include measures targeting plastic production.
Earlier this month the United States and France sent a tacit signal of their backing for the hoped-for outcomes of next week’s Nairobi meeting through a joint statement in which they called for a global deal on cutting plastic pollution on account of the world’s ecosystems having become increasingly clogged with millions of tonnes of synthetic waste that take many centuries to break down. In their joint statement the two countries stressed the “importance of curbing” plastic pollution “at its source” through an international accord to be negotiated at next week’s Nairobi meeting.
Whether, however, this will be sufficient to secure their wish for a “global agreement to address the full lifecycle of plastics and promote a circular economy” given clear signs of pushback from the oil majors that reportedly include ExxonMobil and Repsol, remains uncertain.
