On Addressing Climate Change, America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry Is Already at Work

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are convening in Paris with the aim of forging a legally-binding international climate agreement. The new pact will incorporate ambitious, and disparate, national commitments to address climate change.

In the wake of the 2009 Copenhagen talks — which stalled over disagreements over how the burden of carbon reductions should be distributed — all eyes are on the United States and President Obama who has vowed that the U.S. “not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”

The U.S. oil and gas industry agrees with President Obama on the importance of addressing global climate change, and we agree that it will take real leadership to do so — leadership that, we would point out, is already significantly evident within the oil and gas industry.

While some in Paris will call for new government-directed efforts to reduce emissions, America’s oil and natural gas industry is pushing ahead — through its own leadership and investments — and is achieving strong results, a trend that will continue without government intervention.

The U.S. power sector’s CO2 emissions are near twenty year lows, with natural gas leading the way.

As a country, we’ve reduced emissions from energy much more than any of the other Paris climate summit attendees, including Great Britain, Germany or France.

The U.S. oil and natural gas industry has played a leading role in energy innovation, a fact that is often overlooked by this administration in particular. Between 2000 and 2014, the industry invested $90 billion in greenhouse gas-mitigating technologies. That’s more than any other industry and nearly as much as the federal government ($110.3 billion). The industry invested $14.8 billion to develop domestic wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other non-hydrocarbon resources between 2000 and 2014 — or one out of every six dollars invested in those areas.

These industry-driven investments have already paid off in emission reductions. Since 2009 methane emissions from natural gas production fell 24 percent. Over that same time period emissions from completions and workovers of hydraulically fractured natural gas wells decreased 83 percent, according to the most recent EPA data. And this is occurring as natural gas production continues to rise. 

Meanwhile, many of the Administration’s proposals, could stifle innovation, raise energy bills for those who can least afford it, and reduce our energy security.

America’s oil and natural gas industry has proven that over the long-term it is possible to lead in energy production, and in environmental stewardship. What we need now are market-driven, forward-thinking energy policies that reflect the fact that America is a global leader in energy production and is already leading the way in addressing climate change.