Oil And Gas CEOs Call For Effective Climate Change Agreement At COP21
The CEOs of 10 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies have called for an effective climate change agreement from next month’s UN climate change conference.
In a meeting which was heralded last week, 8 of the 10 CEOs that currently make up the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) met to discuss and then explain how they intend to help combat climate change. In addition to releasing its collaborative report, More energy, lower emissions, the OGCI also published a joint declaration outlining its “collective support for an effective global climate change agreement.”
In the joint declaration (PDF), the CEOs of BG Group, BP, Eni S.p.A, Petróleos Mexicanos, Reliance Industries Limited, Repsol S.A., Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco, Statoil ASA, and Total S.A., recognized “the general ambition to limit global average temperature rise to 2°C, and that the existing trend of the world’s net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not consistent with this ambition.”
The OGCi is hopeful that governments will create “clear stable policy frameworks that are consistent with a 2°C future” so that, in turn, their companies “will support the implementation of these frameworks because they will help our companies to take informed decisions and make effective and sustainable contributions to addressing climate change.”
“Over the coming years we will collectively strengthen our actions and investments to contribute to reducing the GHG intensity of the global energy mix.”
Both the CEOs declaration and the report outline five areas the OGCI companies will focus their own collaboration, including efficiency, natural gas, long-term solutions, energy access, and partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives. The report (PDF) further outlines the specifics of each of these five goals.
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That appears to be a change, do they see the writing on the wall, as in lost revenue?
Or did they just have a change of heart ( literally) ? 😉
I’d guess these CEO’s are more dedicated to their cause than some priests and ministers. (Imams, whatever) But their cause is making money, so being smart people, they’re securing a seat at the fairly new game in town, which is getting some media light now.
Given where this is coming from it has to be viewed with suspicion while giving them a narrow window to show results. Trying to lock in 2 degrees C as the target and mentioning CCS looks like the Trojan horse.
I am suspicious too, but these companies are based in countries where AGW is the consensus position and they can’t afford to look like dinosaurs. Note the absentees: the msjors based in the USA or Russia, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and the Chinese.
Granted, no USA based firms on the list, but Aramco is there…
Correct, fixed.
Good point. Petrobas is under fairly intense investigation, yet again but this time it looks like some people will get caught red handed, so their lack of participation is a little different than the participation of China and Russia. I read stories that say good things are happening in both places and the opposite almost, so what they are really doing to address the problem is unknown. A few photographs would indicate some urgency to do something is badly needed in giant cities like Hong Kong. I live 100 miles east and down wind of L.A. Everyone around here suffers from respiratory ailments it seems.
Weather patterns world wide appear more ‘aggressive’, the pictures of flooding and shifting soils in S. Carolina and now mid California (not far from us) are unnerving. We just found out scorched ground (California has record acreage of that, right now) absorbs very little rain, increasing run off volume and mass. Great. We’re in the midst of a multi-hundred year drought, but our next big problem happening right now is run off and mudslides.
Common sense tells me these patterns aren’t going away. Experience tells me they’ll get worse, there is momentum. Nature doesn’t accelerate linearly, she takes off like a tornado when she gets a reason. All our negotiating banter being said today, might be a lot more pointed, very soon. But never take an eye off the money. Everything is always secondary to the money.
By multi-hundred year drought I mean a drought of this magnitude only occurs on that time cycle, not that the drought will last that long.
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From Greenpeace – via the BBC :-
“The oil companies behind this announcement have spent years lobbying to undermine effective climate action, each and every one of them has a business plan that would lead to dangerous global temperature rises, yet suddenly they expect us all to see them as the solution, not the problem,” said Charlie Kronick from Greenpeace.
“The world should thank them for their offer of advice but politely turn it down. Arsonists don’t make good firefighters.”
Gas companies are trying to throw the coal companies under the bus. A carbon tax (or any carbon reduction method) will hit coal way harder than gas. In the short term carbon reduction greatly benefits them. They are hoping to lock gas in place for decades to come.
That I can believe.
I think you have nailed it Kenwood, it was my first thought when they first came out with OGCI. Kill coal to give them a few more decades. But now I wonder if it isn’t also try to lock the goal at 2 degree, since all signs point to 1.5 degrees being the more likely upper limit. Short of mother earth getting pissed and starting a mini ice age early, which would as a side effect give us an extra 20-50 years to get thing under control.
What do you mean by “1.5 degrees being the uper limit?”
The international community currently says a 2.0 degree celsius rise in temperatures (compared to the pre industrial period) would be horrible for the world. (Think 100s of billions in damages and a lot of people dying(drought, floods etc))
But now as we have a more accurate picture of the climate (better data, better computers) some scientists are saying that we should stay under 1.5 degrees.
A difference of .5 does not sound like a lot, but oil and gas companies would prefer 2 degrees as our goal because they will make billions more under that target.
Ah, I see. Wasn’t aware of the new benchmark. Thank you!
so basically, “We want to pretend to help, please don’t put us out of business”
From what these companies and their industry in general have done in the past, I’ll say it sounds like a pleasant change, but i’m not holding my breath for them to do something meaningful to meet the stated goals.
I suspect that they are looking for a way to gradually divest without changing too much, too fast. It may be a bit of a Trojan horse.