With COP 28, the 28 Annual United Nations Climate Meeting not ‘many moons’ behind us, global heavyweight oil and gas companies have been accused by environmental lobbyists of proffering ‘spin over substance’ undertakings at the Dubai forum to cut emissions even as their operational plans, going forward, point to the projected production of “billions of tonners of CO2” in the years ahead. Global Witness, a three-decade old international NGO that embraces as part of its agenda working to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses, globally, has ‘turned out’ a new analysis that address some of the ‘goings on’ at the November-December climate forum, accusing the heavyweights of deception in their strategic approach to the Dubai deliberations.
The essence of the Global Watch reports accuses the fossil fuel ‘heavyweights’ of using the Dubai forum to proffer ‘spin over substance’ undertakings to cut emissions despite being projected to produce billions of tonnes of CO2 in the years ahead. While it had, seemingly, been envisaged that a meeting of minds between environmentalists and oil industry heavyweights might create a forum driven by an enhanced mindfulness of the relationship between fossil fuel recovery and environmental degradation, it transpires that a recent analysis by Global Witness has revealed that “fossil fuel firms that promised to reduce emissions at the Cop28 summit will produce the equivalent of 150 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050.” The Global Witness report named fifty firms including Shell, ExxonMobil, Equinor and TotalEnergies, that reportedly gave undertakings in Dubai to make their operations net zero by 2050 during the climate conference in Dubai last month.
The Report asserted that while fossil fuel recovery had been one of the centerpieces of the Dubai forum no formal agreement had been reached to slow oil and gas production, which, Global Witness asserts, represents ninety per cent of the named companies overall carbon footprint. Some of the outcomes of the COP 28 forum attracted expressions of concern from key fossil fuel reduction lobbyists including Global Witness’ Senior Fossil Fuels Investigator Patrick Galey, who is advocating “a rapid and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels” and the locking out of “fossil fuel bosses” from climate talks. ExxonMobil Corp. and Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, the world’s largest private and state-sector oil companies, were among the ‘heavy hitters’ in the global oil recovery sector that pledged to cut emissions from their own oil recovery operations.
