Oil and gas majors plan to spend $4.9 trillion on fuel exploration

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Stating the obvious, but they’re either going to find a lot of fuel or lose a lot of money. Chances of the demand fading any time soon still look remote, with global consumption at or near 100 million barrels of oil *per day*. Many believers in greenhouse gas theories of course continue to swallow the propaganda that climate disaster lurks around every corner.

Plans by oil and gas majors to spend $4.9 trillion on fuel exploration are “poles apart” from the goal of the Paris climate deal to limit the global temperature rise, a new analysis showed Tuesday.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb annually, a string of warnings from the world’s top climate scientists have questioned mankind’s ability to prevent the worst effects of global warming while sticking with an economy geared around fossil fuels.

In October, the UN’s climate change panel (IPCC) issued a landmark report saying that a 1.5 Celsius target laid out in the Paris accord could only be hit with near-immediate and drastic cuts in production and consumption of oil, gas and coal.

Yet oil and gas giants plan to invest trillions of dollars in exploring and developing new fields in the coming decades.

This, according to a report by pressure group Global Witness, would confine the Paris goals to the dustbin.

“The oil and gas majors’ current investment plans are nowhere near to being compatible with 1.5C, they are completely poles apart from what is needed,” Murray Worthy, who authored the report for the watchdog, told AFP.

Global oil output is set to grow by 12 percent by 2030—the year by which the UN says greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed by almost half to have a coin’s toss chance of staying within the 1.5C limit.

Global Witness used investment forecasts from market analysts and fuel companies and compared them with the science laid out in the UN report.

Like the IPCC, it did not factor in any major role for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, which oil and gas producers claim will allow them to continue burning fossil fuels so long as emissions can be sucked out of the atmosphere.

“Once you take those out, you are left with needing a 40 percent reduction in oil by 2030,” said Worthy.

Full report here.