North Sea oil and gas producing countries are failing to align their energy policies with the Paris Agreement and a pledge to transition away from fossil fuels made during Cop 28 in Dubai last year, although they are best placed to lead a phase out of production and demand, a report from civil society organisation Oil Change International (OCI) highlighted.
The report looked at countries producing oil and gas in the North Sea — Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The five countries led by Norway and the UK awarded 436 new oil and gas licenses between 2017-23, OCI said.
"The most glaring gap across all countries is their failure to stop approving new fields development," OCI North Sea campaign Manager Silje Ask Lundberg said. She added that if "he countries continue with new oil and gas extraction and exploration they could cause 10.3bn t of new carbon pollution — equivalent to almost 25 years of annual UK emissions at current levels". The report also pointed out that these five countries have the greatest economic capacity to invest in a just transition and the lowest dependence on fossil fuels revenues.
Some developing countries have repeatedly called on developed countries to take the lead during global climate gatherings, pointing at richer nations' hypocrisy in maximising oil and gas resources while pushing for a global phase out of fossil fuels. And some developing nations are too dependent on these resources. "Oil exports provide 60pc of government revenue in Angola, 80pc in Equatorial Guinea, and 88pc in Iraq — all countries with limited non-oil economies capable of absorbing workers or growing to fill the gaps caused by phasing out fossil fuels," the report said.
Norway was ranked worse in the OCI benchmark on criteria such as policy frameworks, oil and gas licensing, policies to align investments with fossil fuel production decline and plans to reduce demand.
The country's oil and gas production is set to increase between 2023 and 2030, and it could become the world's twelfth largest developer of new oil and gas fields through to 2050. At the same time, the country provides mitigation funding for climate crisis fallout in developing countries, but OCI found that it failed to provide a fair share of support, including to phase-out production. Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming.
Norway has several environmental and climate regulations for its oil and gas sector, but these only address scope 1 and 2 of emissions — those from the production, transport and processing, the report said. Scope 3 — from the use of oil and gas — accounts for the brunt of emissions in the sector.
In Norwegian oil and gas legislation and regulations, there is no reference to aligning production to the Paris agreement, said OCI. There is also no framework in place that sets a limit for how much oil and gas Norway can produce, or how restrictive policies should limit emissions, while of the nine parties currently represented in the country's parliament, only one supports an end-date for fossil fuel production in Norway. The example that is used by those who want to continue to invest [in fossil fuels] is that there is a need to continue to supply Europe and Germany with Norwegian oil and gas because consumption is not decreasing fast enough, head of non-governmental Friends of the Earth Norway Truls Gulowsen said.
Keeping Norway's undeveloped oil and gas in the ground would help prevent 4.bn t of carbon pollution, OCI estimated.
