Global Witness

With $280 Billion in Profits, Oil Giants Are ‘Main Winners of the War in Ukraine’

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A protester pretends to celebrate outside Shell’s London headquarters. (Photo: Greenpeace U.K./X)

“They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices,” a Global Witness investigator said of a new analysis.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, one group has clearly benefited: the five biggest U.S. and European oil and gas companies.

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies have made more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits since the war began, according to an analysis published by Global Witness on Monday.

“This analysis shows that regardless of what happens on the front lines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine,” Global Witness senior fossil fuels investigator Patrick Galey said in a statement. “They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices.”

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Big Oil’s profits were fueled in part by high wholesale gas prices, which were already elevated before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and skyrocketed afterward. All five companies covered by the analysis reported record profits for 2022.

This bonanza came as the conflict killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been devastating for millions of people, from ordinary Ukrainians living under the shadow of war, to the households across Europe struggling to heat their homes,” Galey said.

During 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Big Oil of “war profiteering.”

Global Witness calculated that BP and Shell have raked in enough since the war began—at £75 billion—to pay all British household electricity bills through July 2025. Chevron and ExxonMobil have made a combined $136 billion while Total has netted $50.4 billion.

These massive profits also come as the climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, continues to escalate. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years. Yet instead of using their record profits to invest in renewable energy technology, the five major oil companies have cut back on their climate initiatives and handed massive payouts to shareholders.

“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet.”

Of the more than $280 billion the five companies have brought in since the war began, they returned what Global Witness said was an “unprecedented” $200 billion to shareholders. At the same time, Shell rescinded a promise to curb oil production by 2030 and said it would fire around 200 people employed by its green jobs division. BP, meanwhile, slashed its emissions reduction target from 35-40% of 2019 levels by 2030 to 20-30%.

The money paid to shareholders is also money that could have been paid to help communities adapt to the climate crisis or recover from the damage it has already caused. The $111 billion that the five companies paid to shareholders in 2023 alone is 158 times more than the money pledged to climate-vulnerable nations at COP28, and the €15 billion that TotalEnergies rewarded shareholders with was more than the €10 billion that France needed to recover from droughts and storms in 2022.

Galey said the companies were now “spending their gains on investor handouts and ever more oil and gas production, which Europe doesn’t need and the climate cannot take.”

“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet,” Galey said.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Rishi Sunak offers huge fossil fuel subsidies to develop fossil fuel extraction in UK.
Rishi Sunak offers huge fossil fuel subsidies to develop fossil fuel extraction in UK.

Investigating the so-called ‘windfall tax’

Continue ReadingWith $280 Billion in Profits, Oil Giants Are ‘Main Winners of the War in Ukraine’

Analysis reveals 80% of North Sea oil is exported

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North Sea oil rigs in Cromarty Firth, Scotland. Credit: joiseyshowaa (CC BY-SA 2.0)
North Sea oil rigs in Cromarty Firth, Scotland. Credit: joiseyshowaa (CC BY-SA 2.0)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/analysis-reveals-80-of-north-sea-oil-is-exported

Guardian Exclusive: Rise in share of UK oil and gas that is exported challenges PM’s claim that fossil fuel extraction brings energy security

The share of UK’s oil and gas that is exported has increased from 60% to 80% over the last two decades, according to findings that will intensify pressure over the government’s claims that “maxing out” the North Sea will increase the UK’s energy security.

On Monday, the government will attempt to pass the oil and gas bill, which they say will boost energy security by creating a rolling annual licensing regime for new fossil fuel contracts. But critics argue that the fossil fuels extracted will be sold on the global market, and the vast majority will be exported.

…

Now analysis of government data by Global Witness has shown that in the 20 years between 2004 and 2023 the UK awarded 1,680 licences to companies to extract oil and gas in the North Sea. The analysis found that the share of UK oil and gas that was exported between 2004 and 2022 rose from 60% to more than 80%. During the same period domestic oil production fell by 60%.

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Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said the new law would only prolong the UK’s energy problems. “People want long-term solutions to bring down their bills and fight the emissions damaging the climate,” he said. “New oilfields in the North Sea will line the pockets of rich fossil fuel execs; they won’t help the millions of Brits struggling to pay their bills.”

Skidmore said that the reason he had resigned over the bill was because “there is no future energy security in fossil fuels that are extracted by foreign companies, will only be sold on international markets and will have no impact on UK energy security”.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/analysis-reveals-80-of-north-sea-oil-is-exported

Continue ReadingAnalysis reveals 80% of North Sea oil is exported

Fossil Fuel Giants to Lavish Shareholders With Record Paydays as Climate Crisis Deepens

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.  (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” said one campaigner. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts.”

The year 2023 was marked by weather events that made it increasingly clear that the Earth has entered what United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called the “era of global boiling,” with wildfires and prolonged heatwaves impacting millions of people and scientists confirming their suffering was the direct result of fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating.

But for the world’s five largest oil giants, the year marked record profits and the approval of several major new fossil fuel projects, allowing the companies to lavish their shareholders with payouts that are expected to exceed $100 billion—signaling that executives have little anxiety that demand for their products will fall, said one economist.

The companies—BP, Shell, Chevron,ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies—spent $104 billion on shareholder payouts in 2022, and are expected to reward investors with even more in buybacks and dividends for 2023, The Guardian reported.

Shell announced plans in November to pay investors at least $23 billion—more than six times the amount it planned to spend on renewable energy projects—while BP promised shareholders a 10% raise in dividends and Chevron could exceed the $75 billion stock buyback it announced early last year.

Alice Harrison, a campaigner for Global Witness, noted that fossil fuel shareholders will be enjoying their paydays as households across Europe struggle with fuel poverty and the world faces the rising threat of climate disasters brought on by the industry.

“The global energy crisis has been a giant cash grab for fossil fuel firms,” Harrison told The Guardian. “And instead of investing their record profits in clean energy, these companies are doubling down on oil, gas, and shareholder payouts. Yet again millions of families won’t be able to afford to heat their homes this winter, and countries around the world will continue to suffer the extreme weather events of climate collapse. This is the fossil fuel economy, and it’s rigged in favor of the rich.”

In 2023 campaigners intensified their demands for accountability from the oil, gas, and coal industries, and as of last month had successfully pressured more than 1,600 universities, pension funds, and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels. In the U.S., provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been touted as the “largest investment in climate and energy in American history,” went into effect.

But Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, The Guardian that if the industry were truly fearful of policymakers phasing out fossil fuel extraction and expediting a transition to renewable sources, they would be spending far less on new projects and shareholder payouts.

“For this to be the case you would have to believe that the energy transition is happening, and that demand for fossil fuels is going to fall,” Helm told The Guardian.

In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden infuriated climate campaigners by approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, which could lead to roughly 280 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions. His administration also included in a debt limit deal language that would expedite the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which could emit the equivalent of more than 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while the U.K. government greenlit a massive oil drilling field in the North Sea and French company TotalEnergies continued to construct the 900-mile-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which would transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

“These companies are investing a huge amount in new projects, and they’re handing out bigger dividends because they are confident that they’re going to make big returns,” Helm said. “And when we look at the state of our current climate progress, who’s to say they’re wrong?”

Climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate pointed out that the shareholder paydays are expected following a deal on a loss and damage fund at the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, aimed at helping developing countries to fight the climate emergency. That fund was hailed as “historic” and included a commitment of $700 million from wealthy countries—a sum that is expected to be dwarfed by fossil fuel investors’ profits.

“They have picked people’s pockets, fueled inflation and pollution, and deepened poverty,” U.K. House of Lords member and Tax Justice Network co-founder Prem Sikka said of the oil giants. “Governments do nothing to end their monopolistic control. Need to break-up this cartel.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingFossil Fuel Giants to Lavish Shareholders With Record Paydays as Climate Crisis Deepens

Venture Fund Set to ‘Take Control’ of Telegraph Has Fossil Fuel Investments

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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

The group, which reportedly has UAE state backing, is leading the race to buy the British newspaper.

The Daily Telegraph front page. Credit: Steven May / Alamy

The investment fund that has reportedly reached an agreement to buy the Telegraph Media Group has stakes in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can report. 

U.S.-based RedBird Capital has entered into a joint venture to take control of The Telegraph alongside International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

The two groups have reportedly agreed to provide loans to The Telegraph’s existing owners, the Barclay family, to allow them to pay off their £1.16 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. The family lost control of The Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, which is also part of the media group, earlier this year due to this outstanding debt. 

News reports suggest that the deal is being backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, the head of its state-owned investment company, and the owner of Manchester City football club.

Conservative MPs have voiced concerns over the potential purchase and the danger of foreign influence, asking the UK government to use national security laws to investigate the agreement. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has echoed these concerns, warning that the deal could undermine “free expression of opinion” and prevent the “accurate presentation of the news”.

The UAE is a petrostate that has the world’s largest oil expansion plans. The state-owned energy company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures.

RedBird-IMI has said that, under its proposal, The Telegraph and Spectator will be managed by RedBird Capital “alone” and IMI would be a “passive investor”.

RedBird Capital trades in a number of core investment sectors, including energy. The firm’s website states that it holds investments in at least six fossil fuel firms: Aethon United, CapturePoint, FireBird Energy, Four Corners Petroleum, Lambda Energy Resources, and Tally Energy Services.

All of these companies are based in the U.S., with a majority operating in Texas.

Aethon United was listed by Enverus Intelligence Research as one of the most prolific private oil and gas producers in the U.S. in 2023. It was reported in 2022 that the firm was considering a public listing that would value it at more than $10 billion.

CapturePoint specialises in carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), a favoured technology of the fossil fuel industry that it claims will help to limit global warming. The RedBird website claims that CapturePoint is “building out a carbon capture network on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest”.

There is limited evidence of the efficacy of CCUS at scale. DeSmog recently analysed 12 large-scale CCUS projects around the world and found countless missed carbon capture targets, as well as cost overruns, with taxpayers picking up the tab via billions of dollars in subsidies. Meanwhile, captured carbon is often merely used to extract more oil. 

“If this deal goes through, it will pollute our press and the UK’s fight against climate breakdown,” Alexander Kirk, fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, told DeSmog.

RedBird Capital also holds an investment in Majority Strategies, a political strategy firm that claims to have worked for every official Republican presidential nominee since 2000. Majority Strategies received more than $27 million during the 2022 election cycle, including $9.2 million from the Republican Senate Leadership Fund. 

Responding to media speculation about The Telegraph’s future ownership, the paper’s editor Chris Evans sent an internal memo earlier this week. Seen by Politico Playbook, the memo read: “You’ve been asking me how we can be confident that editorial independence would be protected. At the moment I know no more than you will have read.”

Polly Truscott, a foreign policy adviser at Amnesty International UK, told The Times that: “Any Emirati state ownership of the Telegraph may have serious implications for press freedom in the UK and should be carefully scrutinised by the government. In the UAE, anyone who dares to speak out against the Emirati authorities is likely to be at serious risk.”

The UAE ranks 145 out of 180 in the 2023 Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.

Other sources claim that the bidding process for The Telegraph and the Spectator is still ongoing and that no deal has been finalised. Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, is also reportedly interested in buying the titles. DeSmog revealed in October that Marshall’s hedge fund has $2 billion in fossil fuel investments. 

RedBird Capital and the Telegraph Media Group did not respond to our request for comment. 

Climate Attacks

A new DeSmog analysis has found that eight in 10 opinion pieces from The Telegraph on environmental issues downplay the climate crisis. 

Our analysis, for the six months ending 16 October, found that of the 171 articles covering environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, downplaying climate science and ridiculing environmental groups.

Of the 1,930 opinion pieces published by the paper during this period, nearly one in five (17.6 percent) featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Ten writers linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group, wrote a total of 144 opinion pieces for The Telegraph during the period. 

The Telegraph’s print circulation at the end of 2019, when it last released the data, was over 300,000. It had an online audience of 13.5 million in September this year. 

World leaders next week gather in Dubai, UAE, to negotiate how to reduce emissions and limit global warming. The COP28 summit is being led by Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Adnoc, which is the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer. Al Jaber has claimed that fossil fuels should “continue to play a role in the foreseeable future” – a statement labelled as “very dangerous” by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

The UAE has also attempted to emphasise the importance of CCUS in capturing emissions. However, according to an analysis by Global Witness, based on Adnoc’s carbon capture plans, it would take 343 years for the firm to capture all the CO2 emissions it will produce in just the next six years. This week, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition also revealed that at least 7,200 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN-led climate over the last 20 years.

Total trade between the UK and UAE exceeded £25 billion in the year ending Q2 2023, an increase of 47.3 percent compared to the year before. The Gulf state has also pledged to invest £10 billion in “priority” UK industries. 

In the year following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the UK imported £2.5 billion in fossil fuels from the UAE. The average monthly value of fossil fuel imports from the UAE increased from £84.4 million in the year to February 2022, to £195 million the year after. 

In total, UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3 billion in the year following the invasion – an increase of more than 60 percent. 

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingVenture Fund Set to ‘Take Control’ of Telegraph Has Fossil Fuel Investments

Capturing Cop28 chief’s oil firm emissions would take centuries – study

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/15/capturing-cop28-chiefs-oil-firm-emissions-would-take-centuries-study

Analysis deems technology promoted by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber ‘dangerous red herring’

Dr. Sultan al Jaber. Image: Arctic Circle, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Sultan al Jaber. Image: Arctic Circle, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Climate-wrecking emissions produced by the oil company of the Cop28 president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, would take hundreds of years to remove using the carbon capture technology he has been promoting.

With just weeks to go until the crucial Cop28 climate summit, Al Jaber, who is the boss of United Arab Emirate oil company Adnoc, has been backing carbon capture as one solution to the climate crisis.

But analysis by Global Witness has found it would take the company 343 years to capture all the CO2 emissions it will produce in just the next six years.

Jonathan Noronha Gant from Global Witness said the findings proved carbon capture was “a dangerous red herring” that would do nothing to tackle the climate crisis.

“Sultan Al Jaber’s Cop is shaping up to be the Cop of false solutions, inundated by fossil fuel lobbyists pushing empty promises. If Al Jaber is serious – if we are serious – we must immediately reject the CCS [carbon capture and storage] false solution and tackle the existential oil and gas problem head on.’’

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/15/capturing-cop28-chiefs-oil-firm-emissions-would-take-centuries-study

Continue ReadingCapturing Cop28 chief’s oil firm emissions would take centuries – study