Oil producing countries urged to cut output in next 8 years to reduce effects of climate change

Mar 27, 2022 News

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As Guyana increases production…

– researchers expose Exxon’s subtle and sinister forms of foot-dragging

By Zena Henry

Kaieteur News – Because of the threat of climate change, it is imperative that the world cuts its oil production by as much as 88 percent in the next eight years if global warming is to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In fact, the situation is so dire that researchers at England’s Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change are now saying that the world has 28 years left to cut crude production all together if the world is to reduce the effects of a hotter planet, rising sea levels and poor air quality, among other issues accompanying climate change.
This, however, has not stopped oil producers from pushing production levels. Right here in Guyana ExxonMobil is geared to ramp up oil production at the Stabroek Block’s Liza Field. The Russia/Ukraine conflict has impacted global oil supply and as western nations reject Russia’s crude because of its invasion of Ukraine, high prices could encourage increased production in the search for alternative sources. This year, Guyana’s crude is expected to make a rare voyage to Europe as global market suppliers seek alternatives to Russia’s oil.
Greg Hill, Hess’ Chief Operating Officer disclosed that optimizing Guyana’s first floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO), Liza Destiny, could see production up from 140,000 barrels to 150,000 barrels of oil per day. It is currently operating at 120,000 barrels of oil per day. The second FPSO, Liza Unity is also set for optimization to reach nameplate capacity of 220,000 barrels of oil per day by month-end with a 15 percent increase after.

The CEO said that Guyana’s third development on the Stabroek Block at the Payara Field, utilising the Prosperity FPSO, will see production startup next year with a capacity of 220,000 gross barrels of oil per day.
The year after that, the fourth development, Yellowtail, is expected to come on stream with a production capacity of some 250,000 gross barrels per day. The Hess official posited that the potential of six FPSOs in Guyana’s water will see the production of more than one million gross barrels of oil per day at the Stabroek Block by 2027. In fact, there is potential for up to 10 FPSOs to develop the gross discovered recoverable resources currently estimated at more than 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
In the meantime, climate change observers are pushing rich oil producing countries to end production in the next 12 years while, poor countries are being encouraged to do so in the next 28 years. The Tyndall report, by Professor Kevin Anderson and other researchers at the Climate Change Research Centre, is warning that, “There is no room for any nation to increase production.” They say that significant cuts to oil production must to be made this decade to resist global warming.
“The richest (countries), which produce over a third of the world’s oil and gas, must cut output by 74 percent by 2030; the poorest, which supply just one ninth of global demand, must cut back by 14 percent.” The report proposes different phase-out dates for oil and gas producing countries. Considering countries’ differing levels of wealth, development and economic reliance on fossil fuels, the report says the poorest nations should be given until 2050 to end production although they would need significant financial support to transition their economies. Richer countries are urged to quit producing crude by 2034.
In signing the United Nation’s Paris Agreement on climate change, coal power generation was also up for discussion and wealthy Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries were called upon to end this type of energy supply by 2030, with the rest of the world following by 2040.
Calls are intensifying for global leaders and influencers to up their climate change resilience by doing away with heavy carbon contributors, but some oil companies and those that make big bucks from fossil fuel, have been bent on keeping their status quo by resisting climate change action.
Last September, the Harvard University’s news site, Harvard Gazette published an article that focused on deliberate attempts of big oil companies to influence people’s mind against the seriousness of climate change. Under the title ‘Tracing Big Oil’s PR war to delay action on climate change’, the article pointed out that the U.S. House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee had earlier that month widened inquiries into Exxon’s role, in fostering doubt about the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change.
A letter from the panel that was sent to Darren Woods, ExxonMobil’s chief executive, said that lawmakers were “concerned that to protect… profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.”
The Gazette said it had spoken with Dr. Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow in the History of Science, who, together with Naomi Oreskes, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, published a series of studies in recent years about Exxon’s climate communications.
He said a key contribution of the research work demonstrated systematic and statistically significant bias of ExxonMobil’s public communications toward denial and delay. “In our most recent work, we’ve had to rely on statistical techniques from computational linguistics to uncover patterns of speech hiding in plain sight. These include a systematic fixation on consumer energy demand rather than on the fossil fuels that the company supplies and the systematic representation of climate change as a “risk” rather than a reality. These are subtle patterns that, we’ve now realised, have been systematically embedded into climate discourse by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests.”
“That’s particularly discomforting,” Supran charged, “because when you start to pull back the curtain, you see just how sophisticated the oil industry’s propaganda machine has been, how easily their rhetoric has snuck into people’s consciousness and biased the way the public thinks about this.”
Supran continued, “ExxonMobil’s vice president and pioneer of PR in the ’70s and ’80s literally talked about what he called ‘semantic infiltration’.” He called it “the process whereby language does the dirty work of politics.” And he said that the first “general principle” of PR was to “grab the good words…while sticking your opponents with the bad ones.” Our research now shows that’s exactly what they’ve been up to for decades.”
Supran said that from the mid-2000s through to the 2010s, ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies gradually “evolved” their language, in the words of one ExxonMobil manager, “from blatant climate denial to these more subtle and insidious forms of delayism.”
“So, while their outright denial has tapered off, their propaganda hasn’t stopped. It’s in fact shifted into high gear and is now operating with a sophistication that we’ve never seen before,” Supran said.
Last year, it was widely reported that Exxon lobbyist, Keith McCoy had been caught on camera explaining how his company was trying to influence American President Joe Biden’s interest in tackling climate change. McCoy, a senior director in Exxon’s Washington DC government affairs team, admitted that the company was working with “shadow groups” against climate change action, that they fought against science proving climate change, among other things, and that the company was looking out for its investments and shareholders over climate change issues.

 

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