ExxonMobil has been named as one of several major international oil & gas companies planning hundreds of expansion projects in the coming years, which pursuits, the report says, call into question the sincerity of their climate change pledges, reducing them to no more than “PR exercises.”
Oil Change International, described as a United States-based non-profit organisation that “provides research, communication, and advocacy services” on the oil & gas sector, named eight oil & gas companies which it says are planning hundreds of expansion projects in the coming years even as the world is on track to exhaust its remaining carbon budget. The seven other companies named, alongside ExxonMobil, are: BP, Eni, Shell, Chevron, Equinor and Repsol.
The company has reportedly analyzed promises made by the eight companies, rating those promises as “grossly insufficient” to hold global warming to 1.5º C. Its report asserts that should the companies proceed with their respective plans, the attendant projects could add an extra
8.6 billion tonnes of carbon pollution to the atmosphere, or the lifetime emissions of 77 new coal power plants.
The named co-author of the report, Kelly Trout, is reported as saying that the companies’ climate pledges are an attempt to avoid winding down oil & gas production. Trout is quoted as telling Canada’s National Observer newspaper recently that “If these companies were serious about the climate crisis, we wouldn’t see them engaged in as many as, or more than, 200 new expansion projects potentially over the next four years.”
“It’s pretty laughable to claim that there can be any new oil and gas approved that’s actually compatible with 1.5º C.”
UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has been quoted as saying earlier this year that “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness” while the International Energy Agency has said new oil & gas development should cease after 2021 to limit global warming to 1.5º C, while a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that emissions from “existing fossil fuel infrastructure could single-handedly exhaust the remaining carbon budget.”
