The world’s biggest fossil fuel companies are struggling to sugar coat a disaster of their own making
The oil and gas industry is, as you might expect, struggling to come to terms with the prospect of its own demise. As producers and transporters of two of the key things that cause climate change, their days are numbered. They are coping with this in a variety of ways.
Some, like BP, are taking initial steps into this transition. Others, like ExxonMobil or Chevron, remain with their feet planted firmly in the hardcore denialism and delay of the past several decades.
Quite a few major players on this spectrum are members of the “Oil and Gas Climate Initiative”, OGCI, formed in 2014 as a collaborative effort between the major fossil fuel producers to try to bend and twist climate action into something that either delays the transition or, ideally, reverses the demise of fossil fuels. Together they’re just over a third of total oil and gas production around the world.
Recently, the OGCI released its annual “progress report”. It’s a stunning misnomer. It details, in several ways, how the industry has specifically been doing what we have described previously at LobbyWatch: running as hard as possible in the wrong direction. Nestled at the back of the report is a single dataset outlining the quantity of fossil fuels their members companies have supplied. It’s increasing.
It is pretty brazen to present this increase as “progress”. The OGCI very proudly brandished this publication on social media on exactly the same day as the publication of the 2020 update of the UN Environment Program’s “Production Gap” report, highlighting that:
“To follow a 1.5°C-consistent pathway, the world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6% per year between 2020 and 2030. Countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2%, which by 2030 would result in more than double the production consistent with the 1.5°C limit”
Gas, in particular, increased by just under two percent each year in the OGCI report; well off track and not even heading in the right direction.
Production is going up, when major global organisations are pleading with these companies to simply stop digging up and selling fossil fuels. How are they framing this as progress?
By using a climate metric that’s badly misleading
Fossil fuel companies are currently trying to figure out ways they can increase the supply of fossil fuels while at least presenting a veneer of climate action.
It manifests in a variety of ways, but often ends up around the use of “carbon intensity”. This refers to the amount of carbon emissions released in the process of digging up fossil fuels, per barrel of oil, or tank of gas. They specifically ignore the emissions released when the product is used — it’s ‘not their problem’. These emissions are not the bulk of the climate footprint of these companies, which I’ve explained in detail here.
A recent report from Oil Change International very neatly explains how Shell is using a ‘carbon intensity’ target to frame a lack of ambition as strong ambition. Instead of an ‘absolute’ target, it can use this ‘intensity’ metric to, in the worst case, increase its total emissions:
The OGCI addresses these criticisms on its website. “The aim in focusing on carbon intensity is not to open up wiggle room to increase production, but to retain a meaningful target regardless of shifts across the portfolios of member companies”, they say. It’s a galling claim, given months later their ‘Progress Report’ happily brags of an increase in production.
The recent Oil Change International report shows that most of the member companies of OGCI plan to expand their production of oil and gas, according to energy consultancy Rystad Energy, which uses each company’s assets held or due to be sanctioned:
They’re increasingly coy about talking about this expansion. ExxonMobil, for instance, was only really publicly criticised for this when Bloomberg leaked internal reports showing Exxon’s vast plans to increase emissions. As you might expect, Exxon is does not feature prominently within the OGCI’s content. It’s absent from the OCGI’s Youtube page, it’s barely mentioned in the ‘progress report’, and the word ‘ExxonMobil’ only shows up on the website 114 times, compared to 339 for BP.
It’s also hard to avoid how tiny the group’s ‘intensity’ targets are, for the emissions related to extraction. The target represents a reduction of “between 36 and 52 million tonnes of CO2e per year by 2025”. Total global emissions were 32,800 million tonnes of CO2e in 2017. For a climate initiative led by the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, this is pretty measly. The problems with these metrics aren’t the only flaw in this report.
They’re also doing some classic greenwashing
The report makes a point of bragging about rising investment and research and development in “low carbon technologies” (including renewables, carbon capture, hydrogen made from fossil fuels and biofuels). The numbers presented sound impressive. “The companies that provided information spent a total of US$7.4 billion in low carbon technologies in 2019, an increase of 12% over the year”.
A keen-eyed analyst at Bloomberg decided to compare these numbers to the total investment in low carbon technologies:
It isn’t just OGCI’s member companies, of course. The IEA recently published similar data, but included the percentage of total investment. That allowed me to extrapolate the zero-carbon investment relative to total, and come up with this graphic. Strap in, it’s a long journey.
US climate journalist Amy Westervelt compared these numbers to others collated quantifying tweets from fossil fuel companies. The results are stark:
It’s dangerously misleading. These numbers are truly pathetic, but most of their PR and promotions present the false image that they’re investing heavily in transforming into clean energy giants. They’re not.
But more and more people aren’t letting the PR get through
Recently, a collection of brilliant young American climate activists have been taking to social media to bring a wave of backlash to fossil fuel companies engaging in this exact mode of climate delay-ism. When ExxonMobil tweeted “We’re all in this together! Glad to be a part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative”, the tsunami of memes, mockery and evidence-based backlash was gargantuan. It’s tough to make a selection here, but here’s a non-exhaustive few:
It’s becoming a genuine pathway for climate activism. Creating broader awareness around this tactic of feigning participation in climate action while remaining a major cause of its worsening is happening in the language of younger generation — Twitter dunks, viral memes, and collective efforts. It has been devotedly championed by American climate writer Mary Heglar, and is growing in size and scale.
Recently, Shell made a similar mistake, tweeting “What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?”, in a similar vein to BP’s famous “The first step to reducing your emissions is to know where you stand. Find out your #carbonfootprint with our new calculator & share your pledge today!”.
Each feature roughly the same tone: an effort to ‘flatten’ the immense moral burden these companies shoulder, and pretend like they’re one of many millions of individuals all struggling with their carbon footprint. While plenty passes through without comment (there’s just so much), these moments of intense backlash are increasing, and it’s important. They’re the modern equivalent of the people who used to graffiti tobacco industry advertising billboards. In fact, modern fossil fuel billboards are being hijacked too, while other groups work to force fossil fuel companies to label their ads with health warnings.
There is plenty of depth to this struggle. Fossil fuel companies are no longer looking for a “social licence to operate”. They’re looking for a social licence to delay — to reassure, misdirect and mislead their way into extending the lifespans of their fossil fuel sales as long as they possibly can.
The clearest, simplest first step here is to take these efforts and describe them for what they are, and young climate activists are doing far better at that than anything that’s come before.
