A German environmentalist group called Urgewald published a report on Tuesday that found oil and gas production is growing rapidly around the world, frustrating the hopes of climate activists for a “green energy transition.”
The next U.N. climate change conference, COP30, begins in Brazil on Monday.
The climate change movement wanted zero growth in oil and gas exploration, but frustrated Urgewald researchers found that 96 percent of the world’s fossil fuel firms are still expanding, and the pace of growth has increased by 33 percent since the International Energy Agency (IEA) called for a moratorium in 2021.
The worldwide fossil fuel industry is planning to add 256 billion barrels of oil production over the next few years, led by the five giant firms of QatarEnergy, Saudi Aramco, ADNOC in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia’s Gazprom, and ExxonMobil.
Urgewald head researcher Nils Bartsch fumed that oil and gas companies are “treating the Paris Agreement like a polite suggestion, not a survival plan.”
“With 256 billion barrels of new projects on the table, this is not a transition — it is defiance,” he exclaimed.
Another Urgewald analyst said the fossil fuel industry is “racing toward climate breakdown with its foot on the accelerator.”
The activists were particularly angry with Brazil for “presenting itself as a climate leader at COP30 while allowing oil and gas expansion right at the summit’s doorstep, threatening one of our most fragile ecosystems.”
Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras recently opened a new oil well in the Foz de Amazonas, a deep-water region near the mouth of the Amazon River, and says it has plans for up to three more wells.
Petrobras was granted permission for further exploration and development in the Foz de Amazonas in late October by the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama. The decision was denounced as an effort to “sabotage” the COP30 conference by angry environmentalists, who promised court action to halt the development plan.
The CEO of Petrobras, Magda Chambriard, said her company supports renewable energy technologies like biofuel, but simply cannot meet the energy demands of Brazil in the near term without pumping huge amounts of oil.
“The energy transition will be economical, based on a lot of research, a lot of development, and a lot of effort from Petrobras’ technical team,” she promised.
The report produced by Urgewald also excoriated the Trump administration for developing oil and gas resources in the United States, especially liquid natural gas (LNG) production through fracking. The largest LNG exporter in the United States and the leader worldwide, Venture Global, is planning a 171-percent increase in operational capacity.
“US fracking companies are producing far more gas than they can sell domestically. Now faced with a flood of excess gas, companies are racing to build new LNG facilities to liquefy their surplus and push it onto countries around the globe,” the report said.
The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) produced a similar report this week that found most of the world is ignoring past pledges to transition away from fossil fuels. The report noted that none of the sixty nations that agreed to abandon fossil fuels at the 2023 climate conference in Dubai have taken any concrete steps toward meeting that pledge.
UNEP said the chances of meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals, which would ostensibly limit planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2100 by nearly eliminating fossil fuels, were growing slim. The climate change movement believes that warming above 1.5 °C will bring catastrophic effects. UNEP projected up to 2.8 °C of warming under current fossil fuel consumption trends.
The U.N. has yet another climate agency, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which produced its own report in October. The report projected “greenhouse gas” emissions would fall by ten percent over the next decade, but the climate movement believes a 60-percent reduction is necessary.
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