Greenpeace activists board a Shell platform headed for the North Sea to expand existing oil and gas on 6th February (AFP via Getty Images)
It increasingly feels like the oil industry is operating on a different planet.
Profit-wise, things have never been better for the fossil-fuel titans. Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell and TotalEnergies reported record takings of a combined $200bn in 2022 after oil and gas prices soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, rising inflation has left many struggling to afford heating and food. Disasters linked to climate change – which is primarily driven by fossil fuels – brought more misery last year from widespread flooding in Pakistan, to a summer of wildfires across western Europe, and a drought-driven hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa. In the US alone, there were 18 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1bn in 2022.
Still, lots to celebrate in the C-suites. US major Exxon led the pack with the largest profits in history for a Western oil firm after making $56bn.
“A good set of results,” BP CEO Bernard Looney told CNBC on Tuesday after the company’s earnings call also included the bombshell news that BP would be dialing back plans to cut its carbon emissions. BP previously said that emissions would be lowered 35-40 per cent by 2030. Now, it’s weakened that target to a 20-30 per cent cut.
The Big Oil bonanza sparked furious responses across the board from climate activists to the UN Secretary General.
“If you earned £40,000 a day from when Jesus was born to the present day, you would still not make as much as Shell did in profits last year,” Greenpeace tweeted as activists boarded one of the company’s drilling platforms on its way to the North Sea, and demanded it stops expanding oil and gas production around the world.
Activists from Friends of the Earth and Alternatiba doused TotalEnergies’ Parisian HQ in red paint on Wednesday the 8th of February, and accused the company of “climate-killing and criminal activities”.
And US President Joe Biden gave a special shout-out in his State of the Union speech the second week of February.
“Have you noticed Big Oil just reported its profits? Record profits.
Last year, they made $200 billion in the midst of a global energy crisis.
I think it’s outrageous,” Mr Biden said, and proposed quadrupling the tax on corporate stock buybacks.
UN chief António Guterres directly addressed Big Oil as he set out his 2023 priorities before the General Assembly in New York on Monday.
“I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business,” he said.
“Your core product is our core problem. We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence.”
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