Exxon admits greenhouse gas increase
Posted: 13 October 2004
ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, has been increasing its greenhouse gas emissions after supporting George Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty.
The Texan oil firm, which is facing a consumer boycott in Europe over its stance on climate change, is now producing more than twice the CO2 pollution of a country such as Norway.
Exxon, which sells petrol under the Esso banner, saw its greenhouse gas emissions jump 2 per cent last year to 135.6m tonnes, according to new figures verified by the company.
And an Exxon spokesman admitted that the company had no targets for reductions in CO2 emissions although he insisted that it was working hard on "energy efficiency" gains.
"We are taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases, but we are a major producer of energy that society wants and you need [to burn] energy to produce oil and gas," he said.
The growing levels of pollution from Exxon come on the back of annual profits of $17bn, the largest ever in the corporate world.
The company's emissions are more than 50 per cent higher than those of rival Britain's BP despite the US firm's oil and gas production being only slightly larger.
BP produced 83.3m tonnes of greenhouse gases last year on the back of 3.8m barrels of oil and gas output a day.
Exxon's output was 4.4m barrels a day in 2003 with much of the pollution coming from its refineries and chemical plants.
While BP has tackled the concerns of climate change quite openly, Exxon has been more equivocal.
In the face of the Stop Esso campaign in the UK, Exxon has donated money to climate change research and insists it is taking the issue seriously, but it remains opposed to Kyoto.
"Like many other companies, we do not believe Kyoto is the right approach. We fear it would impose dramatic economic costs in the developed world, while doing little to achieve its goal of addressing climate change since developing nations, which require most of the world's increased needs for energy to grow their economies, have no comparable commitments," says the Exxon website.
Exxon's worsening greenhouse gas record is partly due to increased flaring of gas in Nigeria. Flaring occurs when natural gas is brought out of the ground alongside oil, but is just burned off straight into the atmosphere.
The company admits that nearly 600m cubic feet of gas was burned off worldwide in 2003 compared with less than 450m in 2002.
Exxon says it will start to eliminate flaring from 2006, which it says is ahead of the latest Nigerian government targets.
The deteriorating environmental performance by Exxon is "highly dangerous", according to the Climate Justice Programme, a group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and lawyers supporting court action against polluters.
It points out that the first legal case brought in the US by eight local states against five power companies started this summer. The action in Manhattan calls on the firms to cut emissions because of their harmful impact on the planet.
Peter Roderick, director of the Climate Justice Programme, said the flaring of gas in Nigeria by Exxon was particularly "outrageous" given the first attempts to outlaw it started in 1969.
"Flaring [in Nigeria ] is the biggest source of greenhouse gas production in sub-Saharan Africa . It is a breach of human rights and something that is not allowed in this country," he explained.
Posted by Alexander Lindsay, Editor Pipeline Magazine
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