Executive Summary
Since the Paris Agreement especially, big oil and gas companies have published a succession of climate pledges and plans. What they lack in ambition, they make up for in questionable accounting, misleading information, and greenwashing. The case for keeping oil, gas, and coal in the ground has never been stronger, but the reality is that big oil and gas companies continue to resist and block a fast and fair transition to clean, renewable energy.
Ambition: Of the 8 analyzed companies, 6 have explicit goals to increase oil and gas production. Even those without such plans are advancing new fossil fuel projects and selling polluting assets rather than shutting them down, masking their actions as contributing to an energy transition while perpetuating climate pollution.
Integrity: None of the companies we analyzed have set comprehensive targets to ensure their total emissions decline rapidly and consistently, starting now. Every company intends to rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS), offsets, and/or other methods that delay and distract from ending fossil fuels, and prolong the health and community safety impacts of dirty energy.
People-Centered Transitions: All companies fail to meet basic criteria for just transition plans for workers and communities where they operate. All companies fail to meet basic criteria on upholding human rights.
Rystad Energy data indicate that the eight largest U.S.- and Europeanbased producers are on track to increase their combined production by 17 percent above 2023 levels by 2030 (Figure 2). Such an increase in production on a global scale would put the world on a path towards global heating well beyond 2°C locking in destruction of vulnerable communities and ecosystems. Conversely, if these companies were to cease drilling for new oil and gas, their production would be expected to decline by 17 percent collectively by 2030 – a pace much closer to aligning with a 1.5°C pathway, though still not a fast-enough pace.
These eight companies’ cumulative oil and gas production between now and 2050 threatens to exhaust more than 30 percent of the entire world’s remaining carbon budget for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The companies that have collectively done the most to fuel the climate crisis cannot be trusted to meaningfully confront it. Six of the eight big oil and gas companies analyzed expressly plan to grow oil and gas production this decade – and independent forecasts show that all eight combined are on track to produce more oil and gas in 2030 than now. Big oil and gas companies will not phase out their own products or manage their own decline. Investors and governments must intervene. Additionally, courts must hold these companies accountable.
The world needs a fair, fast, full, and funded transition away from fossil fuel production and use, with some existing fields and mines being closed early alongside meaningful just transition measures. This will require both demand- and supply-side interventions. It is crucial that these interventions are based on equity, and in particular that the wealthiest countries with diversified economies should act first and fastest. Those big oil and gas companies with huge historical responsibility for the climate crisis, and wealth derived from many decades of oil, gas, and coal extraction, must act first and fastest, and must be required to provide finance to support others.
Ending new licensing and permitting of fossil fuel extraction or infrastructure;
Setting a 1.5°C-aligned phaseout date for ending oil and gas production, consistent with principles of global equity between countries, with Global North producers moving first and fastest;
Eliminating subsidies and domestic and international public finance for fossil fuel extraction or infrastructure, including technologies like CCS that perpetuate the industry’s pollution;
Putting tax policies in place to disincentivize investment in new fossil fuels and maximize public funds, in order to pay their fair share for a just transition and climate impacts at home and abroad;
Establishing policy frameworks that guarantee a just transition for affected workers and communities. This includes: Holding companies accountable for cleanup, restoration, and decommissioning costs in phasing out fossil fuel assets; and Holding companies accountable for paying reparations to impacted communities;
Adopting legislation to protect human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights and to ensure that legal avenues exist for people to seek injunctive relief, compensation, or both.
