Saudi Aramco

Study links world’s top oil and gas firms to 200 ‘more intense’ heatwaves

Original article by Ayesha Tandon republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license. A group of tourists huddled under a tree whilst visiting the Acropolis, Athens, Greece. Credit: Dimitris Aspiotis / Alamy Stock Photo Global warming linked to the world’s biggest oil and gas companies made all “major” 21st century heatwaves more intense and frequent. This is according to new research, published in Nature, which uses “extreme event attribution” to assess the impact of climate change on all 21st-century heatwaves that were classified as “major disasters”. The authors find one-quarter of the 213 heatwaves would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global warming. They add that the effect of climate change on heatwave frequency and intensity is becoming more pronounced as the planet warms. The study estimates the emissions stemming from the operations and production of more than 100 “carbon majors”, such as ExxonMobil, BP, Saudi Aramco and Shell. The fossil fuels produced by these companies account for 60% of all human-caused CO2 emissions over 1850-2023, the study says. The authors find that heatwaves recorded over 2000-23 were made, on average, 1.7C hotter due to climate change, with half of this increase due to the emissions originating from carbon majors.  This study “could be used to support future climate lawsuits and aid diplomatic negotiation”, according to a scientist not involved in the research. Worsening heatwaves  As the planet warms, heatwaves are becoming more intense and frequent, driving economic losses, ecosystem damage and a rise in heath-related deaths.  The EM-DAT database catalogues all “major disasters” that have been reported since the year 1900 – defined as events that cause at least 10 fatalities, affect at least 100 people, or result in the declaration of state of emergency or a call for international assistance. Between 2000 and 2023, the database lists more than 200 heatwaves. These are shown on the map below, where darker pink indicates a greater number of heatwaves. Countries with no reported heatwaves are shown in grey. The map below shows the number of heatwaves per country recorded over 2000-23 on the EM-DAT database. Data: Quilcaille et al (2025). The study authors acknowledge that heatwave reporting is “highly uneven”, with only nine of the heatwaves reported in the database since the year 2000 in Africa, Latin America or the Caribbean. (This is largely because extreme heat events in these regions are not routinely monitored.) They then carried an attribution analysis on each heatwave to identify whether it was made more likely or intense due to human-caused climate change. The chart below shows how climate changes increased the intensity and frequency of the 78 heatwaves assessed over 2000-09 (left), 54 heatwaves assessed over 2010-19 (middle) and 81 heatwaves assessed over 2020-23 (right). The authors find that climate change increased the intensity and probability of all 213 heatwaves in the study. They add that the influence of climate change on heatwaves is strengthening over time. In each panel, the bars show the percentage of heatwaves in that time period that were made 0.25-1.0C (yellow), 1.0-2.0C (orange) or 2.0-3.0C (red) hotter due to climate…

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David Lammy Shouldn’t Have Given a Spin Doctor for Planetary Death a Plum Foreign Office Job

https://novaramedia.com/2025/07/16/david-lammy-shouldnt-have-given-a-spin-doctor-for-planetary-death-a-plum-foreign-office-job Karen Blackett. Photo: Gov.uk Even if she did give him £5,000. Last year, when UN Secretary General António Guterres said PR firms were “acting as enablers to planetary destruction” by working for fossil fuel clients, he didn’t name WPP specifically. But they were the main company he was talking about. The advertising behemoth has more clients in the oil industry than any rival. Guterres, being a diplomat, uses mild language. In my opinion, WPP is the world’s leading spin doctor for planetary death. And so I was surprised when I checked in on who David Lammy had appointed to the Foreign Office supervisory board, to see WPP’s recent UK President Karen Blackett is now one of the four non-executive directors – as I revealed last week over on Democracy for Sale. The supervisory board provides “strategic direction,” and “oversight” for the department. Adverts for the roles say they are “significant contributors to both the operational and strategic leadership of the department. Their primary objective is to bring independent advice, support and challenge… helping to shape the department’s work.” In February, lawyers for campaign group Badvertising and others submitted a complaint about WPP to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, arguing it was breaching its international guidelines on corporate responsibility. Its work for a number of fossil fuel and pollution intensive corporations, the lawyers said, “directly increases demand for carbon intensive products and undermines global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”. Why is that an organisation whose recently departed UK boss you’d want overseeing British foreign policy? Blackett spent 29 years working for WPP – three decades as a spin doctor at an advertising behemoth which represents some of the most destructive corporations on the planet. How can her advice possibly be independent? How can the perspectives and viewpoints of clients not have imprinted on her? As the Badvertising website says, “for every rights-abusing, climate-wrecking corporation, there’s an advertising agency working hard to clean up their public image. And no one does this better than the world’s biggest ad firm, WPP”. Last month, climate activists occupied WPP’s London headquarters, demanding it cut ties with clients including Shell, BP, Total, ExxonMobil, Drax and Saudi Aramco. ... Article continues: https://novaramedia.com/2025/07/16/david-lammy-shouldnt-have-given-a-spin-doctor-for-planetary-death-a-plum-foreign-office-job UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party's support for and complicity in Israel's genocide of Gaza. 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) Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

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Just 36 Companies Drove Half the World’s Climate-Altering Emissions in 2023: New Report

Original article by Sharon Kelly republished from DeSmog. Hurricane Harvey, downgraded to a tropical storm when it hit Vidor, Texas, flooded an Exxon gas station, Sept. 1, 2017. Credit: ©Julie Dermansky Companies and states most responsible for climate change are also those working hardest to prevent climate action, new Carbon Majors report finds. Half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 came from just three dozen companies, according to a new report released today by the Carbon Majors project, with the list dominated by coal, cement, and oil producers. Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, the year’s worst offender, drove 4.4 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide pollution alone in 2023, the report found. Five publicly-traded oil companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, and BP — combined to produce an additional 4.9 percent of the year’s global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the report adds. The Carbon Majors database builds on the innovative work published by researcher Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) begun in 2013. For the first time, instead of attributing the build-up of industrial carbon dioxide and methane emissions to each of the world’s nations, Heede managed to trace those emissions to 90 specific “carbon major” companies. Last year, the nonprofit think tank InfluenceMap collaborated with CAI to produce major updates to the database — and today’s report marks the first annual update to that report, incorporating global data from 2023. The year’s top carbon polluters were a mix of investor-owned and state-owned or national companies — but they have one thing in common. “They’re some of the most obstructive actors towards climate policy,” Emmett Connaire, a senior analyst at the Carbon Majors project and one of the authors of the report, told DeSmog. “I think it kind of kills the argument from industry that they’re not responsible for their CO2 emissions because we need fossil fuels to grow,” Connaire said, “when they’re the most obstructive and trying to keep up the demand for their products in the face of the overwhelming scientific opinion.”  Eight of the nine public companies most responsible for carbon emissions in 2023 were “highly active or strategic” in their climate lobbying, the report notes. And their lobbying efforts took aim at regulating climate-altering pollution or sought to impede the energy transition.“ Of these 9 companies, 5 score a D or below, indicating unsupportive positions on climate policy,” the new report finds, citing data from InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap database, which grades companies based on their alignment with the Paris Agreement. “The remaining 4 score only slightly higher at C-.” InfluenceMap gave climate policy lobbying scores to the top 10 investor-owned companies, all oil, gas, and coal firms. Credit: Carbon Majors 2025 report None of the five top oil companies named in the report immediately responded to a request for comment from DeSmog. Investor-owned companies aren’t the only ones actively fighting to prevent climate action, the Carbon Majors report notes. “State-owned companies are even more oppositional to climate regulation globally according to LobbyMap research,” the report finds, listing Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom, Mexico’s Pemex, and China’s…

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Report Outlines Which Companies Are Most Responsible for Climate Crisis

Original article by THOR BENSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). "It is morally reprehensible for companies to continue expanding exploration and production of carbon fuels in the face of knowledge now for decades that their products are harmful," said Richard Heede, who established the Carbon Majors dataset. A report released by Carbon Majors on Thursday says that 57 companies were responsible for 80% of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuel and cement production between 2016 to 2022. Saudi Aramco, Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom, and state-owned producer Coal India were at the top of the list. Carbon Majors has been keeping track of which companies are contributing the most to the climate crisis since 2013. "The Carbon Majors research shows us exactly who is responsible for the lethal heat, extreme weather, and air pollution that is threatening lives and wreaking havoc on our oceans and forests," Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth and chair at Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said in a statement. "These companies have made billions of dollars in profits while denying the problem and delaying and obstructing climate policy." https://twitter.com/InfluenceMap/status/1775870430575816928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1775870430575816928%7Ctwgr%5E520112b0c905aac6990e1d21f3d7613ed720b284%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Freport-companies-climate-crisis The report states that nation-state producers account for 38% of CO2 emissions in the database. That's the highest percentage of any of the types of companies listed in the database. "The Carbon Majors database finds that most state- and investor-owned companies have expanded their production operations since the Paris agreement. Fifty-eight out of the 100 companies were linked to higher emissions in the seven years after the Paris agreement than in the same period before," the report reads. In terms of investor-owned companies, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP contributed the most to CO2 emissions. ExxonMobil alone was responsible for 3.6 gigatons of CO2 emissions over a seven-year period. "It is morally reprehensible for companies to continue expanding exploration and production of carbon fuels in the face of knowledge now for decades that their products are harmful," said Richard Heede, who established the Carbon Majors dataset, told The Guardian. "Don't blame consumers who have been forced to be reliant on oil and gas due to government capture by oil and gas companies." Original article by THOR BENSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge

Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The bank's work for businesses expanding production of fossil fuels is a stark contrast to its climate change promises Every year business and world leaders jet into Davos to discuss climate change and other global issues at the World Economic Forum. And every year they are met with vigorous accusations of hypocrisy. Those accusations may well be levelled at the executives from HSBC – one of the world's top funders of fossil fuel expansion – as they mingled with their peers in the pretty Swiss ski town this week, discussing how to develop a long-term strategy for climate, nature and energy. HSBC says delivering a net-zero global economy is “a pillar of our strategy as a business”. In December 2022, the bank made the shock announcement that it would stop financing new oil and gas fields. Environmental campaigners celebrated, with the responsible investment charity ShareAction saying the decision set “a new minimum ambition for all banks committed to net zero”. But on the same day, HSBC bankers started selling shares in the refining business of Saudi Aramco, one of the most aggressive expanders of oil and gas. An investor in HSBC told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that the bank’s policy has been cleverly worded to allow it to fund some of the world’s biggest polluters while boasting about its green credentials. An analysis of Refinitiv data by TBIJ has found that in the year since HSBC’s new policy was announced, the bank has helped raise more than $47bn (£37bn) for companies that are expanding the production of oil and gas, despite dire warnings from scientists that this will push the world beyond its survivable limits. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told ITV News: “In the world, if we make large scale oil, gas and coal development, we cannot reach our 1.5 degrees target, full stop.” He said if a bank is serious about aligning its business with net zero, it cannot continue to fund companies developing new oil and gas fields. Andrew Harper, chief responsibility officer at Epworth, an investment manager that holds HSBC shares, said: “[HSBC’s] policy, which is supposed to act as a safety net for the climate, is by design letting the bank circumvent its pledges by allowing them to adhere to the letter rather than the spirit of what they're claiming. “As investors, we’re not going to be fooled by the marketing, by the pledges, by these policies. We want to see real change and for them to seriously end new fossil fuel financing, no loopholes. Anything short of that is the bank trying to dupe its key stakeholders.” HSBC said its policy allows the bank to continue providing finance “at a corporate level” and its approach “is based on the latest science for achieving net zero and follows the UN-backed approach for climate target setting and net zero alignment for…

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