None of the 30 oil and gas producers assessed are close to being in line with Paris climate agreement targets "and some have regressed", a report from think-tank Carbon Tracker found today.
Carbon Tracker flagged "backsliding, particularly around oil and gas production plans" from the producers assessed in its report, Paris Maligned III. The think-tank assessed 30 of the largest producers — a mixture of corporations and national oil companies — against six metrics. These included production plans, greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets and methane reduction targets. It did not assess producers based in countries subject to international sanctions.
"Almost all producers are planning to increase oil and gas production in the coming years… Such growth plans are at odds with the Paris Agreement's 1.5˚C target and many are incompatible with a below 2˚C scenario", the report found. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — seen as the overarching consensus on climate science — notes that a substantial reduction in fossil fuels is needed in order to reach climate goals.
The Paris agreement seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial levels and preferably to 1.5°C.
The only producers assessed that are not planning to increase production are London-listed independent Harbour Energy and Spain's Repsol, Carbon Tracker found. Carbon Tracker ranked Repsol highest overall for alignment with Paris agreement goals and Harbour Energy in second place. European companies were ranked more highly in line with Paris goals, with seven of the top 10 places. Three state-owned oil companies — Mexico's Pemex, Algeria's Sonatrach and Kuwait's KPC — and US firms ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips took the five lowest places in the ranking table.
"Despite some political and market headwinds, investor engagement on climate risk remains strong, particularly in Europe", the report noted.
Carbon Tracker this year scored companies on the extent to which they planned to cut methane emissions — specifically "near-zero methane by 2030" across upstream activities and "midstream gas assets where applicable", it said. This is in line with the decarbonisation charter which many of the companies assessed signed up to at the UN Cop 28 climate summit in December 2023.
Companies' methane reduction plans "are typically more climate-aligned than their overall GHG targets", the report found. But "there is still considerable room for improvement because significant sources of methane emissions are overlooked", it added.
