The future oil and gas extraction plans of just 25 companies are set to blow the world’s 1.5°C carbon budget, finds a new Energy Monitor investigation. The Net Zero by 2050 pathway from the International Energy Agency, published in 2021, concluded there should be no development of new oil and gas fields if the world is to reach net zero by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5°C.
Energy Monitor maps out the data behind this recommendation, showing just how extensive the climate impact of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers is likely to be.
Our analysis shows that the world’s 25 leading oil and gas producers are extracting oil and gas from more than 3,700 fields around the world, with a further 300 planned in the immediate future. These fields collectively contain 500 billion barrels of oil and around 2,300 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to analysis of thousands of exclusive data points from our parent company GlobalData.
…
“This [GlobalData] data confirms what investors have known for some time: that a business-as-usual approach by the oil sector is bad for investors and catastrophic for the planet,” Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at the US climate think tank Ceres, told Energy Monitor. “The industry needs to focus on accelerating the transition to a low-carbon future, not investing in carbon-intensive assets that the world won’t need, and the climate can’t afford.”
The Existing, not Living report, commissioned by Scotland’s largest social landlord, the Wheatley Group, spoke to tenants around the country to look at the impact of the social security system on their lives.
The research showed that 65 per cent of claimants believed that UC payment failed to give them enough money to cover the basics of life.
One tenant said of her situation: “Trying to live on £243 per month, that’s horrible.
“I’m expected to pay my council tax, gas and electricity, pay debt and rent arrears.
“It’s physically impossible to pay for all that and, of course, also your internet or some kind of mobile phone with internet, which you need to have if on UC.”
THREE major unions will be launching a joint campaign to halt social care privatisation in West Lothian, they announced over the weekend.
Following the integration of health and social care in Scotland in 2014, local integration joint boards (IJBs) have run social care, with council social work departments relegated to the status of “contractor.”
The boards are made up of health board members and local councillors.
West Lothian IJB, which operates in a locale with the fastest-growing elderly population in Scotland, is considering forcing the privatisation of four care homes for the elderly, according to the Unite, GMB and Unison unions.
The government has quietly published plans to effectively legalise “hazardous” accommodation for thousands of asylum seekers in England.
In a move labelled “shameful” and an “assault on human rights” by housing and refugee charities, a new draft law proposes removing landlords’ obligation to get a HMO (house in multiple occupation) licence if they are providing accommodation to vulnerable asylum seekers.
Campaigners say HMO licences are the primary way authorities currently ensure homes filled with large numbers of people they were not initially designed to fit do not become a major fire risk. They are normally required for all private rented properties that house five or more people from multiple households and are granted by councils if inspectors are satisfied that the building meets government guidelines, including that it isn’t dangerously overcrowded, in disrepair, damp or mouldy.
OIL and gas giants were accused of “grotesque profiteering” today after BP reported that it had raked in an eye-watering £4 billion in just three months.
The mammoth profit total for the first quarter of 2023 was down from the near £5bn the energy firm pocketed in the same period last year following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
But the combined profits of both BP and Shell have now hit a whopping £55bn over the last year as gas and electricity bills have more than doubled for Britons already struggling with 40-year high inflation and plummeting take-home pay.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “BP’s grotesque profiteering is continuing at pace.
“Profiteering is a blight on the economy which is driving prices higher, leaving workers poorer while businesses struggle to keep the lights on.”
UNISON is challenging the Tory government’s latest attack on the right to strike in a two-day High Court hearing starting on Wednesday.
The public-sector union’s case was prompted by then prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to scrap decades-old regulations preventing bosses from employing agency workers to break industrial action.
Last July’s widely condemned action was “unlawful and violates fundamental trade union rights,” Unison argued.
General secretary Christina McAnea said: “Breaking strikes with unqualified and ill-experienced agency workers doesn’t address the root causes of why people are striking and it only puts the public in danger.”
THE TUC is calling today for solidarity in defence of democracy and against racism and extremism to mark the day 90 years ago that trade unions were banned in Nazi Germany.
Union offices were raided and officials and activists rounded up on May 2 1933; some were tortured and some died in concentration camps in the years that followed.
Independent trade unions were replaced with the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front, a propaganda tool for the regime and its hate-filled anti-semitic ideology.
“Trade unions are a bastion of democracy and freedom against authoritarian and violent regimes,” said the TUC, which is providing training and resources for union activists to counter racism, including anti-semitism, and attempts by the far right to recruit in workplaces.
Persecution of trade unionists continues around the world, the union body said.
The Electoral Commission has admitted it will ‘not be possible to accurately quantify’ the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box
The number of people turned away at polling stations because they do not have Voter ID will never be known, the elections watchdog has admitted.
People will be required to show photographic ID for the first time at polling stations on Thursday.
But the Electoral Commission has admitted it will “not be possible to accurately quantify” the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box.
Data reveals the world’s leading oil and gas majors continue risk-laden, global expansion, despite net-zero pledges.
…
Analysis of exclusive fields data from GlobalData, Energy Monitor’s parent company, shows that the world’s five largest Western oil majors by revenue – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies – are planning for a future misaligned with a net-zero pathway, as outlined by the IEA.
The findings come despite the fact that all five companies have pledged on paper to reach net zero by 2050, and they are all based in countries that hold similar pledges on a national level. The findings also come on top of an earlier Energy Monitor investigation, which found that the oil and gas extraction plans of just 25 oil majors will produce carbon emissions that use up 90% of the world’s remaining 1.5°C carbon budget.
In the case of the five Western oil majors, the first key net-zero misalignment is the sheer size of the companies’ expansion plans. Rather than entering the period of managed decline that the IEA recommends should occur to be aligned with net zero by 2050, data shows that the five companies are in the process of developing 157 new fields, on top of the 1,350 they already operate. These upcoming fields would add a massive 122 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) to the 299 bboe remaining in the five companies’ already-operating fields.
A motorist drove through Just Stop Oil protesters blocking a road in north London on Tuesday morning (2 May), colliding with a person.
“It went over my foot,” a member of the group can be heard saying.
The demonstration was part of Just Stop Oil’s vow to march every weekday and on Saturdays from 24 April to call on the government to stop licensing any new fossil fuel projects in the UK.
The car wasn’t hanging around for Just Stop Oil’s protest. Credit: Twitter/Just Stop Oil
…
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told LADbible: “Police are appealing for witnesses and dash cam footage after a person was involved in a collision with a vehicle on Holloway Road, Islington, whilst engaged in a protest, at around 10:00hrs, today Tuesday 2 May.
“The incident was brought to police attention after being circulated on social media and shows the person being involved in collision with a grey Renault Megane.
“If you were the person or have any information about the incident please report by calling 101, tweeting @MetCC or online at www.met.police.uk/.”
After the footage went viral, Just Stop Oil shared the video and commented how they believe that ‘inflammatory language’ from politicians and commentators has caused this end result.
The group tweeted: “After weeks of inflammatory language from politicians and right-wing media personalities, a car has finally rammed into a peaceful protest.
“Are you about to comment ‘Good!’ or ‘Stay out of the road?’
“Are you sure that the side you want to pick is the side of violence, of the repression of protest?
Since mid-March, the world’s oceans have been hotter than at anytime since at least 1982, raising concerns among some climate experts about accelerated warming.
Why it matters: Hotter oceans are hugely consequential for land areas, since they can contribute to more frequent and severe extreme weather and climate events, from deluges to heat waves.
In addition, the temperature spike could be a sign that warming is speeding up in ways that climate models failed to anticipate.
The situation has also driven conflict, with more than four million people now in need of humanitarian aid.
A cohort of 19 researchers from seven countries studied if climate change was to blame, ruling that the longer rainy season has become drier, while the short rainy season has become wetter all due to changes in global temperatures.
They branded the drought “one of a kind”, adding that climtae change had made agricultural drought one hundred times more likely.
Left wing faction Momentum compared Starmer’s shifting position to that of Nick Clegg, who famously went into the 2010 general election pledging to abolish tuition fees only to triple them when in government. A spokesperson for Momentum said: “This move wouldn’t just fly in the face of party democracy and the wishes of Labour Students. It would be a betrayal of millions of young people in desperate need of hope. The Labour leadership should learn from Nick Clegg’s failure, not repeat it.”
The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made similar comments. He tweeted: “Young people should not be saddled with a lifetime of debt just because they want to get an education. Abolish tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and deliver free education for all.”
Cullen commented that, although the outcome of today’s meeting appeared to be set, nurses will remain in dispute with the government over pay and staffing.
“Tuesday’s meeting with Steve Barclay appears a foregone conclusion,” said Cullen. “Different unions and different professions came to different, but respectable, conclusions on this pay offer.
“The deal being accepted by others does not alter the clear fact that nursing staff, as the largest part of the NHS workforce, remain in dispute with the government over unfair pay and unsafe staffing.”
And Cardwell exposed his link to the account when he tweeted one message pretending to be Gorst, thenimmediately deleted it and was stupid enough to put the same message out on the ‘Spam’ account moments later
Right-wing Labour MP Jess Phillips has deleted a tweet in which she said she bought her first home at the age of twenty and described how it changed her and her children’s ‘fortune’
…
Phillips has previously told the Financial Times, presumably in an oddly-placed effort to boost her working-class credentials, that at age 22 she was living in a ‘squat’
A Conservative MP has said delaying climate action risks damaging the UK’s economic prospects, in a major review of the government’s net zero plans.
The report by Chris Skidmore says the government’s climate policies need to be more consistent and ambitious.
The UK is “falling behind” on some targets and needs a “new approach”, the report says.
It calls for 25 actions within two years, including food eco-labelling, and phasing out gas boilers by 2033.
Mr Skidmore – the Tory MP who wrote the report – was commissioned by former prime minister Liz Truss to review the government’s delivery of net zero, to ensure it was “pro-growth and pro-business”.
Some green campaign groups praised the report for focusing on the economic opportunities of net zero and urged the government to heed its recommendations.
…
In his conclusion, Mr Skidmore said the UK was in a “net-zero race” and delaying decisions risked losing jobs, infrastructure and investments to other countries.
The UK, he said, had “reached a tipping point” where the “risks of ‘not zero’ are now greater than the associated risks of taking decisive action on net zero now”.
Meanwhile, at the Royal Courts of Justice, campaigners celebrated a High Court ruling that granted charity Greenpeace permission to proceed with a judicial review of new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea.
The UK’s Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, has reassured Britain’s oil and gas industry that it has his full support to continue North Sea drilling during a keynote speech given at the Spectator’s Energy Summit on Wednesday.
At the event, which was sponsored by National Gas as well as Drax, Shapps told an audience mostly composed of energy sector professionals that it “simply makes no sense whatsoever to deny our own oil and gas, and instead import it – with twice the embedded carbon – from elsewhere in the world”. He added that it is “very important” to understand that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognises the need for “some” oil and gas production in 2050 when the UK has reached net zero.
…
Meanwhile, just one mile down the road at the Royal Courts of Justice, campaigners celebrated a High Court ruling that granted charity Greenpeace permission to proceed with a judicial review of the government’s decision to launch a new oil and gas licensing round in the North Sea.
On Wednesday morning, the judge gave Greenpeace permission to conduct a full judicial review into the government’s failure to take into account the environmental effects of consuming the oil and gas due to be extracted in the new licensing round, in which fossil fuel companies submitted more than 100 licences for exploration.
“See you in court” one campaigner wrote on Twitter tagging Shapps, who was in the process of assuring his audience that the government “will not shy away from awarding new licences where they are justified”. The fate of the controversial Rosebank oil field, with the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil and therefore exceed the UK’s carbon budget, remains undecided.
.webp)
