Oil multinationals care little about CO2 damage – they want to expand production

She wants to save the fossil past for the future and has no intention of looking humbly at the damage caused by 100 years of CO2 vaporisation.

world no 2 says: The fight against climate change is important, but our businesses are more important.

The President of this second world looks like Amin H. Nasser. He once attended King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and has been President of Saudi Aramco, the largest and most valuable oil exploration company in the world, since 2015.

Saudi Arabia wants to massively increase oil and gas production

The state oil giant, which has been in the hands of the Saudi Arabian government since 1980, now accounts for around 10 percent of global oil exploration. Now they want to increase annual production capacity from 12 million barrels per day to 13 million barrels per day and gas production even by 50 percent by 2030.

With this, Saudi Aramco is marching into a future that should look like the present. Or as the Financial Times writes: “Saudi Aramco is betting that it can continue to do what it does best: pump oil out of the ground.” reduce production.

Aramco oil particularly environmentally friendly?

The company rejects criticism of its expansion plans because the extraction of this Saudi Arabian oil would result in the lowest CO2 emissions of any oil in the world. In the first sustainability report that Saudi Aramco has just published, the phrases “lowest carbon” and “least carbon” appear 14 times: “As you know, we are the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases per barrel of oil,” he writes for the report responsible managers. He believes, “If Aramco increases its share of global oil production, it’s better for the world because it reduces the carbon footprint of the entire industry.”

You have to know: Of the total CO2 emissions of the oil industry, only 15 percent is attributable to extraction, but 85 percent to further processing and the combustion process in power plants, automobiles and airplanes.

It is questionable whether other oil companies are actually reducing their production. Especially now that things are going so well. In the brown world, other companies do good business too.

ExxonMobil with gigantic net profit

ExxonMobil already achieved a profit of 23 billion dollars in 2021 and is expected to report another XXL increase in 2022. In the first three quarters of 2022 alone, the oil company posted net income of $42 billion.

In any case, one does not want to be treated by the EU Commission as an annoying polluter. So the American group ExxonMobil sued the European Union to get the abolition of the excess profit tax for oil companies. On Wall Street, Exxon has meanwhile climbed back into the top 10 largest companies in the S&P 500. The company is now worth twice as much as the car manufacturer Toyota .

Exxon threatens to withdraw from Europe

Exxon threatens EU withdrawal from Europe. Because: With an investment volume of more than three billion dollars, the company has been one of the largest investors in European refineries over the past ten years.

“We’re looking for solid business models that are underpinned by a stable and predictable investment climate,” said Exxon spokesman Casey Norton confidently. Then it becomes clearer than clear: “Whether we invest here depends primarily on how attractive and globally competitive Europe will be.”

Almost 25,000 kilometers of new oil pipelines are being planned

For the representatives of the brown world, it is a blessing that wherever climate change is not the top issue, the largest amounts of oil and gas are stored. Almost 25,000 kilometers of new oil pipelines are currently being planned worldwide – enough to encompass almost two-thirds of the world. Around 10,000 kilometers of these are already under construction. These projects are led by the USA, followed by India, China and Russia.

For example, 2.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil are stored underground in Uganda. In this region – one of the poorest in the world – the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the French company TotalEnergies have been building the world’s longest heated oil pipeline, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, since the beginning of last year. Once completed, the 1,443-kilometer pipeline is expected to produce around 40,000 cubic meters of oil per day. The heater is needed to heat the oil to 50 to 70 degrees to keep it pliable.

China does business with the Taliban

In Afghanistan, China has just struck a deal with the Taliban to develop oil fields in northern Afghanistan. The Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum & Gas Company will explore for oil from a catchment area totaling 4,500 square kilometers – the largest economic project in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power. According to estimates, there are mineral resources worth over a trillion dollars hidden under the earth in the country – so far little touched. In the brown world, communists and Islamists become brothers.

Conclusion: The green against the brown world, that describes the conflict of this century. Anyone who thinks this battle is lost in the face of the aggressiveness of the past towards the future is not well advised. Or to paraphrase Karl Jaspers: “Hopelessness is defeat that has already been anticipated.”