tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/oil-industry-29103/articlesOil industry – The Conversation2024-01-12T13:27:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2184252024-01-12T13:27:51Z2024-01-12T13:27:51ZNot all carbon-capture projects pay off for the climate – we mapped the pros and cons of each and found clear winners and losers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566974/original/file-20231220-29-i3lg8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C8500%2C5636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Producing concrete blocks with captured carbon, like these in Brooklyn, NY., has both economic and climate benefits.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ClimateDecarbonizingBuildings/7719f5a25a9e4b1c89afd7eef7a37e58/photo">AP Photo/John Minchillo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Capturing carbon dioxide from the air or industries and recycling it can sound like a win-win climate solution. The greenhouse gas stays out of the atmosphere where it can warm the planet, and it avoids the use of more fossil fuels.</p>
<p>But not all carbon-capture projects offer the same economic and environmental benefits. In fact, some can actually worsen climate change.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://volker-sick.engin.umich.edu/">lead the Global CO₂ Initiative</a> at the University of Michigan, where my colleagues and I study how to put captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) to use in ways that help protect the climate. To help figure out which projects will pay off and make these choices easier, we <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2023.1286588">mapped out the pros and cons</a> of the most common carbon sources and uses.</p>
<h2>Replacing fossil fuels with captured carbon</h2>
<p>Carbon plays a crucial role in many parts of our lives. Materials such as fertilizer, aviation fuel, textiles, detergents and much more depend on it. But years of research and the climate changes the world is already experiencing have made <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/">abundantly clear</a> that humanity needs to urgently end the use of fossil fuels and remove the excess CO₂ from the atmosphere and oceans that have resulted from their use.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of a landscape shows how greenhouse gases and released, captured and stored in various ways, including oceans, land, forests and human activities." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566951/original/file-20231220-29-qulhfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Balancing the environmental carbon budget is complex, and active carbon management is necessary to stabilize the climate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Michigan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Some carbon materials can be replaced with carbon-free alternatives, such as using renewable energy to produce electricity. However, for other uses, such as aviation fuel or plastics, carbon will be harder to replace. For these, technologies are being developed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.52548/KCTT1279">capture and recycle carbon</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalco2initiative.org/">Capturing excess CO₂</a> – from the oceans, atmosphere or industry – and using it for new purposes is called <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/ccus-in-clean-energy-transitions">carbon capture, utilization and sequestration</a>, or CCUS. Of all the options to handle captured CO₂, my colleagues and I favor using it to make products, but let’s examine all of them.</p>
<h2>CCUS best and worst cases</h2>
<p>With each method, the combination of the source of the CO₂ and its end use, or disposition, determines its environmental and <a href="https://doi.org/10.7302/5826">economic consequences</a>.</p>
<p>In the best cases, the process will leave less CO₂ in the environment than before. A strong example of this is using captured CO₂ to produce construction materials, such as concrete. It seals away the captured carbon and creates a product that has economic value.</p>
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<p>A few methods are carbon-neutral, meaning they add no new CO₂ to the environment. For example, when using CO₂ captured from the air or oceans and turning it into fuel or food, the carbon returns to the atmosphere, but the use of captured carbon avoids the need for new carbon from fossil fuels. </p>
<p>Other combinations, however, are harmful because they increase the amount of excess CO₂ in the environment. One of the most common underground storage methods – enhanced oil recovery – is a prime example.</p>
<h2>Underground carbon storage pros and cons</h2>
<p>Projects for years have been capturing excess CO₂ and <a href="https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/resources/global-status-of-ccs-2022/">storing it underground in natural structures</a> of porous rock, such as deep saline reservoirs, basalt or depleted oil or gas wells. This is called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). If done right, geologic storage can durably remove large amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere.</p>
<p>When the CO₂ is captured from air, water or biomass, this creates a carbon-negative process – less carbon is in the air afterward. However, if the CO₂ instead comes from new fossil fuel emissions, such as from a coal- or gas-fired power plant, carbon neutrality isn’t possible. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2215-0">No carbon-capture technology works at 100% efficiency</a>, and some CO₂ will always escape into the air.</p>
<p>Capturing CO₂ is also expensive. If there is no product to sell, underground storage <a href="https://www.iisd.org/articles/deep-dive/why-carbon-capture-storage-cost-remains-high">can become a costly service</a> ultimately covered by taxes or fees, similar to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2020.0010">paying for trash disposal</a>.</p>
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<p>One way to lower the cost is to sell the captured CO₂ for <a href="https://www.iea.org/commentaries/can-co2-eor-really-provide-carbon-negative-oil">enhanced oil recovery</a> – a common practice that pumps captured CO₂ into oil fields to push more oil out of the ground. While most of the CO₂ is expected to stay underground, the result is more fossil fuels that will eventually send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, eliminating the environmental benefit.</p>
<h2>Using captured carbon for food and fuel</h2>
<p>Short-lived materials made from CO₂ include <a href="https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/sustainable-aviation-fuels/">aviation fuels</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcou.2021.101726">food</a>, <a href="https://www.aspirin-foundation.com/history/chemistry/">drugs</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2013.10.003">working fluids</a> used in machining metals. These items aren’t particularly durable and will soon decompose, releasing CO₂ again. But the sale of the products yields economic value, helping pay for the process.</p>
<p>This CO₂ can be captured from the air again and used to make a future generation of products, which would create a sustainable, essentially <a href="https://www.energy.gov/fecm/articles/co2-recycling-technology-limits-opportunities-and-policies-circular-carbon-economy">circular carbon economy</a>. However, this only works if the CO₂ is captured from the air or oceans. If the CO₂ comes from fossil fuel sources instead, this is new CO₂ that will be added to the environment when the products decompose. So even if it is captured again, it will worsen climate change.</p>
<h2>Storing carbon in materials, such as concrete</h2>
<p>Some minerals and waste materials can convert CO₂ to limestone or other rock materials. The long-lived materials created this way can be very durable, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2022.878756">lifetimes of longer than 100 years</a></p>
<p>A good <a href="https://theconversation.com/bendable-concrete-and-other-co2-infused-cement-mixes-could-dramatically-cut-global-emissions-152544">example is concrete</a>. CO₂ can react with particles in concrete, causing it to <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/making-minerals-how-growing-rocks-can-help-reduce-carbon-emissions">mineralize into solid form</a>. The result is a useful product that can be sold instead of being stored underground. Other durable products include aggregates used in road construction, carbon fiber used in automotive, aerospace and defense ]applications and some polymers.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Volker Sick, director of the Global CO₂ Initiative at the University of Michigan and author of this article, discusses why carbon capture and its use has been slow to gain attention.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These materials provide the best combination of environmental impact and economic benefit when they are made with CO₂ captured from the atmosphere rather than new fossil fuel emissions.</p>
<h2>Choose your carbon projects wisely</h2>
<p>CCUS can be a useful solution, and governments have started <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-announces-1.2-billion-nations-first-direct-air-capture">pouring billions of dollars</a> into its development. It must be closely monitored to ensure that carbon-capture technologies will not delay fossil fuel phaseout. It is an all-hands-on-deck effort to take the best combinations of CO₂ sources and disposition to achieve rapid scaling at an affordable cost to society.</p>
<p>Because climate change is such a complex problem that is harming people throughout the world, as well as future generations, I believe it is imperative that actions are not only fast, but also well thought out and based in evidence.</p>
<p><em>Fred Mason, Gerry Stokes, Susan Fancy and Stephen McCord of the Global CO₂ Initiative contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Volker Sick receives funding from the Grantham Foundation for the Preservation of the Environment.</span></em></p>The combination of the source of the CO₂ and its end use determines its environmental and economic benefits or consequences.Volker Sick, Professor of Advanced Energy Research, Director of the Global CO2 Initiative, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193822023-12-08T21:14:38Z2023-12-08T21:14:38ZCOP28: The scientific basis for a rapid fossil fuel phase out<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/cop28-the-scientific-basis-for-a-rapid-fossil-fuel-phase-out" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>It was perhaps unavoidable that fossil fuels would take centre stage at this year’s COP28 climate negotiations, held in Dubai and presided over by oil magnate Sultan al-Jaber. </p>
<p>And indeed, it took only days for controversy to erupt in the wake of al-Jaber’s claim that there <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels">is no science behind the need to phase out fossil fuels to meet the 1.5 C target</a> of the Paris Agreement. He later claimed he was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/04/cop28-president-says-no-science-for-fossil-fuel-phase-out-claim-was-misinterpreted">misinterpreted</a>. </p>
<p>Scientists were quick to respond. A <a href="https://futureearth.org/2023/12/05/sign-the-cop28-statement-the-science-is-clear-we-need-net-zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2050/">statement signed by more than 100 climate scientists</a> reiterated that the world needs to achieve net zero carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by 2050 to limit warming, and that all scenarios consistent with the 1.5 C target include an immediate and rapid decline in fossil fuel use. </p>
<p>The key question at play in <a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/GST_0.pdf">this year’s negotiations</a> though is whether declining fossil use needs to lead to a phase out of all fossil fuels, or merely a phase down. </p>
<p>And should this language refer to all fossil fuel use, or only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/climate/what-does-unabated-mean-anyway.html">“unabated” fossil fuels</a>: those that continue to be used without carbon capture technology to prevent some of the resulting emissions.</p>
<h2>Branching paths</h2>
<p>There are as <a href="https://iiasa.ac.at/models-tools-data/ar6-scenario-explorer-and-database">many different 1.5 C scenarios</a> as scientists who signed the statement responding to al-Jaber’s claim. All of these 1.5 C scenarios show how we might reach net zero CO₂ emissions, but the technological pathways can differ considerably. </p>
<p>Some use large amounts of <a href="https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-capture">carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)</a> technology to decrease the emissions resulting from continued fossil fuel use. Virtually all also include <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/outreach/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Factsheet_CDR.pdf">carbon dioxide removal (CDR)</a>: natural or technological strategies to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. </p>
<p>All 1.5 C scenarios show that our immediate goal must be to achieve a peak and rapid decrease of global use of fossil fuel energy this decade. But without a complete phase out of fossil fuels, limiting warming to 1.5 C would require the widespread use of CCS to limit the CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, as well as CDR to remove from the atmosphere those emissions that cannot be abated by capture technology. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An overview of the technologies, and controversies surrounding carbon capture systems, produced by the Financial Times.</span></figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cop28-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-1.7048746">Fossil fuel industry representatives</a> are quick to claim that CCS (and its subtle variant <a href="https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage">CCUS: Carbon Capture <em>Utilization</em> and Storage</a>), is how the fossil fuel industry will bring the world to align with the 1.5 C target. </p>
<p>But after decades of research and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/09/carbon-capture-oil-gas/">billions of dollars of government financing</a>, CCS remains an <a href="https://ieefa.org/resources/carbon-capture-remains-risky-investment-achieving-decarbonisation">expensive and inefficient CO₂ abatement</a> technology that has not lived up to expectations. </p>
<p>So while CCS may have a role to play, for now that role seems fairly limited. </p>
<h2>Not practically viable</h2>
<p>A recent study shows that an over-reliance on CCS in 1.5 C pathways leads to <a href="https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-12/Assessing-the-relative-costs-of-high-CCS-and-low-CCS-pathways-to-1-5-degrees.pdf">far higher economic costs</a>, compared with pathways that limit its use to capturing only the most difficult-to-abate CO₂ emissions, such as those from cement manufacture.</p>
<p>Carbon dioxide removal is <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304575/global-carbon-capture-cost-by-technology/">even more difficult and expensive</a>. Where CCS captures CO₂ from the high-concentration output of power plants, CDR must capture CO₂ from the much lower ambient levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere itself. </p>
<p>Both processes require the captured CO₂ to be sequestered in permanent reservoirs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01245-w">to contribute to a durable net-zero CO₂ world</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://netzeroclimate.org/research/carbon-dioxide-removal/">Virtually all current carbon dioxide removal</a> is being achieved by forest-based methods such as afforestation and reforestation. However, these forest-based removals amount to less than a third of the amount of <a href="https://globalcarbonbudget.org">CO₂ emitted globally by deforestation and other land-use changes</a>. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/carbon-removal-is-needed-to-achieve-net-zero-but-has-its-own-climate-risks-217355">Carbon removal is needed to achieve net zero but has its own climate risks</a>
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<p>Natural forest regeneration and other nature-based carbon removal methods <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn9668">have an important role to play</a> in reversing the climate and biodiversity consequences of global deforestation. But their limited capacity and risk of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz7005">impermanence in the face of increasing climate disturbances</a> means that natural carbon storage is not able to offset ongoing fossil fuel emissions.</p>
<p>Technological carbon removal methods could achieve larger removal levels, but these come with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2870">high economic and/or environmental costs</a>. Biomass energy with CCS, or BECCS (which uses harvested biomass to produce energy, combined with technological capture and sequestration of the emissions), would have severe <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-institute/public/publications/briefing-papers/BECCS-deployment---a-reality-check.pdf">repercussions for ecological systems and could also negatively impact global food production</a>. </p>
<p>Direct air capture with carbon sequestration (DACCS) could avoid some of these land-use consequences, but comes with an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/innovators-trying-bring-down-sky-high-cost-direct-air-capture-2023-10-24/">even higher price tag</a>.</p>
<h2>Choices</h2>
<p>The scientific literature is clear that CCS and CDR methods are difficult, expensive and unable to deliver rapid near-term emissions reductions. And yet, virtually all 1.5 C emissions scenarios include both CCS and CDR methods in their transition to net zero CO₂ emissions.</p>
<p>So the question of whether the science supports the need for an “<a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/GST_0.pdf">orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels</a>” depends on what we believe CCS and/or CDR will be able to deliver between now and 2050. </p>
<p>Will the costs of technological CCS and CDR methods come down fast enough to allow these technologies to expand to the scale that would be needed to counter ongoing fossil fuel use? And if so, will we be able to employ these technologies without causing significant harm to ecological systems, food security and Indigenous and local communities? </p>
<p>And what is the incentive to do so when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.10.024">renewable energy</a> is so much <a href="https://www.theenergymix.com/ccs-costs-cant-compete-with-renewables-wont-deliver-by-2030-report-finds">easier and cheaper</a>? The track record so far suggests that neither CCS nor CDR is likely to help us overcome these challenges anytime soon.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cop28-why-we-need-to-break-our-addiction-to-combustion-218019">COP28: Why we need to break our addiction to combustion</a>
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<p>This year’s COP28 has become a battle between fossil fuel industry lobbyists trying to carve out room for fossil fuels a in a 1.5 C pathway, and a growing civil society movement calling for a <a href="https://fossilfueltreaty.org">fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty</a>. </p>
<p>Scientific evidence can inform this discussion, but can only take us so far. The world needs to make a choice that is based on the science, and to have this choice reflected in the negotiated outcome of COP28.</p>
<p>As a climate scientist working in this space, I would choose a future that increases equity, restores natural systems, and replaces fossil fuels with non-carbon renewable energy, grounded on a robust fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.</p>
<p>I would choose to pursue a rapid and just fossil fuel phase out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>H. Damon Matthews receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, from Microsoft and from the Climate Change Action Fund of Environment and Climate Change Canada.</span></em></p>Does the science support the need for a fossil fuel phase out to reach 1.5 C? The answer depends on whether we believe that carbon capture and removal technologies can be deployed safely at scale.H. Damon Matthews, Professor and Climate Scientist, Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2141322023-10-11T20:44:08Z2023-10-11T20:44:08ZHow oil companies put the responsibility for climate change on consumers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549664/original/file-20230914-4201-zir9fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C667&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aerial view of an oil sands operation in Alberta.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The political response to the climate crisis remains largely inadequate in the face of heat waves, hurricanes, floods and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/quebec-climate-change-wildfires-research-1.6943502">forest fires</a> that are accelerating and <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/">intensifying</a>. </p>
<p>The political inertia can be explained, among other things, by the stranglehold of fossil fuel interests on political decision-makers, and the strong influence polluting industries have on the spheres of power in North America. </p>
<p>These industries use two types of discourse to secure their interests. First, they discredit and marginalize ecological issues. Just think, for example, of the actions taken by oil and gas companies against climate policies, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/20/gas-industry-waging-war-against-climate-action">in Seattle, Wash.</a>, where they hired lobbyists to torpedo pro-environmental policies adopted by the city, and simultaneously paid Instagram influencers to promote gas. </p>
<p>Secondly, industry acts to convince people that their polluting activities are compatible with managing the climate and environmental crises. These rebranding strategies are part of a wider objective of “greenwashing” extractive activities. Over the past three decades, the five biggest U.S. oil companies have spent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/08/oil-companies-climate-crisis-pr-spending#:%7E:text=Over%20roughly%20the%20last%20three,money%20groups%20and%20campaign%20donations.">more than US$3 billion</a> on marketing and donations to boost their communications with the general public and political decision-makers. </p>
<h2>Making citizens responsible for curbing the climate crisis</h2>
<p>One particularly significant rhetorical strategy the oil industry has adopted is to place responsibility for climate change mitigation and adaptation on the individual.</p>
<p>By putting the burden of reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — and consequently the fight against climate change — on individuals, oil companies and their political allies are taking the onus off themselves to make changes to their fossil fuel production, consumption and exploitation practices.</p>
<p>As a doctoral student in political science and a specialist in climate change adaptation, I have examined the interests, ideas and institutions that shape and restrict our adaptation practices. For the past three years, I have been analyzing environmental discourses in Louisiana to explain why climate policies are moving so slowly.</p>
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<img alt="View of an oil refinery, with mountains in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548420/original/file-20230914-22774-qv076i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An oil refinery in Burnaby, B.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The carbon footprint as a symbol of industry marketing</h2>
<p>The most obvious expression of this strategy of placing responsibility on the individual is the creation of the carbon footprint. Born of a <a href="https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham">communications strategy by the giant British Petroleum</a> in the early 2000s called “Beyond Petroleum,” the carbon footprint measures the impact of individual consumption on greenhouse gas emissions. </p>
<p>Through <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forgotten-oil-ads-that-told-us-climate-change-was-nothing">numerous advertisements</a> promoting the importance of individual action in the climate crisis, BP has succeeded in shifting responsibility for the climate problem onto the consumer. This, in turn, removes the industry’s responsibility for finding solutions and reducing carbon emissions. </p>
<p>BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was also designed to encourage individuals to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle while maintaining their consumption levels. This strategy contributes to what researchers Karl Smerecnik and Valerie Renegar of San Diego State University and Southwestern University call <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17524031003760879">capitalistic agency</a>. </p>
<p>By endorsing the environmentalist image and removing themselves as the source of the problem, oil giants limit people’s ability to think about other forms of environmental action beyond consumption, and thus, economic growth. It confines the individual and his or her responsibility towards climate change within the logic of the market, reducing the possibilities for systemic transformation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="gas station, with parked cars" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548421/original/file-20230914-29-77m7k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gas station of the multinational British Petroleum (BP), in Cordoba, Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332221002335">ExxonMobil and Total also engage in the same strategies</a>. They emphasize greenhouse gas emissions as a problem of demand, not supply, creating an imaginary concept around <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook">the individual as a consumer</a> and the sole stakeholder responsible for mitigating climate change. </p>
<p>This communication strategy legitimizes the continued production of fossil fuels and serves to protect the industry from restrictive environmental regulations by pointing the finger at growing demand.</p>
<h2>Louisiana’s “green” and community-based oil industry</h2>
<p>My doctoral research on the political discourses and practices of adaptation in Louisiana shows that fossil fuel industries rely on this rhetorical and marketing logic. “Greenwashing” enables them to turn their role on its head and present themselves as genuine environmental saviours by investing in coastal restoration and promoting an eco-responsible, community-based industry.</p>
<p>Lobbyists for major oil companies like ExxonMobil and advocacy groups like the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, as well as their political partners in the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives, insist on the “green” nature of fossil fuels. </p>
<p>This rhetoric conveys the idea that preserving extractive activities is a benefit for the United States and for the fight against climate change. According to this line of reasoning, American oil and gas have a better carbon footprint than oil and gas produced internationally. They, therefore, help reduce global emissions in the face of growing consumer demand. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/17/ohio-natural-gas-green-energy/">“green” fossil fuel narrative</a> is also gaining momentum in the legislative spheres of other states, ensuring the stranglehold of these industries on local economies. </p>
<p>Referring to the ecological activities of oil companies in Louisiana as a true “Cajun environmental movement,” lobbyists solicit local identities and citizen support in an effort to preserve their operating activities. This other form of individualization targets climate policies, particularly those of the Biden administration, as a direct attack on the interests and well-being of local populations. </p>
<p>A veritable “oil culture” has thus emerged through community investment (for example, Shell’s long-standing funding of the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, or of local hurricane recovery operations). It also highlights the entanglement of Cajun identities with the historical development of the local oil industry. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548419/original/file-20230914-19-rfrjml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hip-hop singer Big Freedia performs at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2023, April 28, 2023. Shell has been funding the festival for years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Using individual responsibility to reinforce political inertia</h2>
<p>In Louisiana in particular, individualization can be seen in the popular support for extractive activities and the rejection of restrictive regulations or environmental movements. Positioned as true environmental and community protectors, oil and gas industries maintain their influence in legislative spheres through political lobbying and the support of public opinion. In this way, they manage to stave off any reconsideration of their operating practices.</p>
<p>Large-scale individualization, whether through BP’s campaigns or <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/france-to-plant-1bn-trees-by-2030/">French President Emmanuel Macron’s</a> appeal to schoolchildren to plant trees, reverses responsibility for the fight against climate change. It encourages the political inertia that continues to protect the interests of polluting industries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214132/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah M. Munoz has received funding from the Montreal Centre for International Studies, the Centre for the Study of Democraric Citizenship, the Collectif de recherche Action Politique et Démocratie and Mitacs.</span></em></p>By making individuals responsible for reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the oil industry is deflecting responsibility for making profound changes in their production practices.Sarah M. Munoz, Doctoral researcher in political science / Doctorante en science politique, Université de MontréalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146702023-10-11T13:55:47Z2023-10-11T13:55:47ZRising oil prices, surging inflation: The Arab embargo 50 years ago weaponized oil to inflict economic trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552594/original/file-20231006-29-4blfs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=321%2C1017%2C3548%2C2355&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cars lined up for gasoline in New Jersey in 1973 as supplies ran low and prices shot upward.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/drivers-queue-for-fuel-at-a-petrol-station-near-trenton-new-news-photo/155367107">Frederic Lewis/Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, a secret deal among Arab governments triggered one of the most traumatic economic crises to afflict the United States and other big oil importers. </p>
<p>Saudi King Faisal and other Arab leaders <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo">launched an oil embargo</a> on Oct. 17, 1973, as payback for Washington siding with Israel in <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/arab-israeli-war-1973">its war with neighboring Egypt and Syria</a>.</p>
<p>The oil market hostilities arose from a pact between Faisal and the leaders of Egypt and Syria, whose armies planned surprise drives to retake their territory under Israeli occupation. If the United States intervened to assist Israel, Faisal and other Arab producers agreed to retaliate with the “oil weapon.”</p>
<p>When Washington <a href="https://amcmuseum.org/history/operation-nickel-grass/">airlifted in U.S. weapons</a> that helped Israel thwart Arab gains, Faisal and OPEC’s Arab members retaliated. They increased oil prices, banned oil shipments to the United States and cut production by 5% per month. </p>
<p>The ensuing economic and political carnage is legendary. The embargo catalyzed a long period of upheaval in global oil markets and pain at the gasoline pump for Americans and consumers globally. Oil prices <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1973-74">quadrupled nearly overnight</a> and remained high for over a decade. Producing countries leveraged the opportunity to reclaim sovereignty over their oil reserves. By 1980, many had completed the process of kicking Western oil companies out of their territories.</p>
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<h2>Oil’s global regime change</h2>
<p>The embargo’s disruptive power was due to two key factors: OPEC’s dominance of world oil supply, and oil’s supremacy in the global energy mix.</p>
<p>Prior to the embargo, oil fueled almost half of total energy consumption in the United States (47.5%) and worldwide (49%). While OPEC countries produced more than half (53%) of <a href="https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review">global oil</a>, the concessions were operated by Western oil majors.</p>
<p>After the embargo, producer states took over. Control of global oil production passed from Western oil giants like Shell and Exxon to newly formed national oil companies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men in suits sit at two rows of tables across from one another. Ahmed Zaki Yamani is looking into the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552582/original/file-20231006-21-fz8jzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, second from left at the table, negotiated a deal that shifted control of Arabian American Oil Company from Exxon, Chevron, Mobil and Texaco to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco is now the world’s largest oil producing company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/picture-taken-08-october-1973-in-vienna-showing-the-news-photo/97661766?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, a torrent of cash from oil sales poured into Middle Eastern countries where rudimentary services like electricity were still being built out. Oil revenues in Saudi Arabia jumped fortyfold between 1965 and 1975, from US$655 million to $26.7 billion. These countries also amassed <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/energy-kingdoms/9780231179300">new geopolitical power</a>. </p>
<h2>How the oil price spike played out in the West</h2>
<p>In the West, price increases wreaked havoc on economies and transport systems that were far less efficient than today. Inflation soon boiled over into “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/investing/premarket-stocks-trading-stagflation/index.html">stagflation</a>,” a combination of economic stagnation and high inflation. Misguided policies, including gasoline <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/what-the-1970s-teaches-about-todays-energy-crisis/">price controls</a> and rationing, exacerbated shortages, creating long lines at service stations and emboldening gasoline thieves.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ra9Ep6jEcLA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A look back at the 1970s oil crisis.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>America saw a pell-mell downsizing of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VrjlpAdTrU">gas-guzzling vehicles</a> and a simultaneous ramping up of imports of fuel-efficient Japanese cars. Drivers obsessed over miles per gallon, and the U.S. government imposed corporate average fuel economy, or <a href="https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10562">CAFE, standards</a>, aimed at saving fuel by requiring automakers to sell more fuel-efficient cars.</p>
<p>Western oil companies, kicked out of the Middle East and other oil regions, pivoted to more difficult terrain: the offshore Gulf of Mexico and North Sea, and the Arctic regions of northern Alaska.</p>
<p>As scholars of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wXoaLZMAAAAJ&hl=en">energy</a> <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/expert/mark-finley">policy</a>, we have long studied the embargo’s spillover effects on the global economy and political systems. These outcomes are a central theme in Jim Krane’s 2019 book “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/energy-kingdoms/9780231179300">Energy Kingdoms</a>.” On the embargo’s 50th anniversary, Oct. 17, 2023, King Faisal’s son, the former Saudi Ambassador to Washington Prince Turki Al Faisal, is joining us for a <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/event/chaos-energy-markets-then-and-now-50-years-after-1973-arab-oil-embargo">conference at Rice University’s Baker Institute</a> to discuss the still-valid lessons of the Arab oil embargo.</p>
<h2>50 years later, new pressures</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/event/chaos-energy-markets-then-and-now-50-years-after-1973-arab-oil-embargo">Fifty years on</a>, markets have changed. But oil continues to be the world’s dominant energy source.</p>
<p>On one hand, crude oil use has grown dramatically. <a href="https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review">Global supply has risen</a> from less than 60 million barrels per day in 1973 to nearly 94 million barrels per day in 2022. Motor fuel prices are still a critical input to inflation; we calculate that the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/">increase in gasoline prices</a> in 2022 cost the <a href="https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/population-data/households/">average American household</a> roughly $1,000.</p>
<p>On the other hand, OPEC’s importance – and oil’s share of the global energy mix – has declined. <a href="https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm">OPEC’s 13 members</a> account for just 36% of global oil production today. The high oil prices caused by the 1973 embargo created incentives for oil drillers to diversify toward new sources of oil and develop substitute fuels to replace oil.</p>
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<p>Within 15 years of the embargo, production outside OPEC increased by a massive 14 million barrels per day. Oil from Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico helped stabilize U.S. production. Later, the <a href="https://www.strausscenter.org/energy-and-security-project/the-u-s-shale-revolution/">shale revolution</a> turned the United States into the world’s largest producer and a <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php">net exporter of oil</a>, capping a 50-year quest.</p>
<p>The world has also become much more efficient, reducing the amount of oil needed to maintain the same activity. Global per-capita oil use per dollar of gross domestic product has fallen by a massive 60% since 1973, our calculations show.</p>
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<p>But, as in 1973, energy security concerns are back at the top of national agendas. </p>
<p>Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine reprised the risks of energy “weaponization.” Europe, in particular, has been hurt by <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/putin-bulldozing-russias-energy-exports-and-pushing-energy-transition">overdependence on Russian natural gas</a> and has raced to <a href="https://energy.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-reaches-90-gas-storage-target-ahead-winter-2023-08-18_en">shift its energy sources</a>. The Israel-Hamas war that began on Oct. 8, 2023, has not yet ignited retaliatory responses from Arab governments, and the initial <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/israel-hamas-war-energy-gas-boom-oil-mediterranean-3ac6b224?st=rhcg1eq7ytb7xgi">impact on oil</a> has been minimal, but geopolitical effects from such a large event could still roil markets.</p>
<p>Energy security itself is also being altered. The transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/more-transitions-less-risk-how-renewable-energy-reduces-risks-mining-trade-and-political-dependence">insulates consumers from most supply chain risks</a>. Electric vehicles likewise protect owners from swinging oil prices. So, while crucial materials can still be manipulated by governments, shortages and price spikes mainly affect component manufacturers and their investors. If supplies are bottlenecked long enough, the energy transition could be delayed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Aerial view in 2014 of the Houston Ship Channel and surrounding energy facilities in Houston." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552553/original/file-20231006-25-733dzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. still imports more than 8 million barrels of petroleum per day, but since 2020, it has exported more than it has imported. More than one-third of U.S. crude oil exports go through the Houston Ship Channel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/iip-photo-archive/16549974959">Carol M. Highsmith/U.S. State Department Bureau of Global Public Affairs</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like the embargo 50 years ago, today’s crises have rendered the future of energy massively uncertain. Changes in the global energy mix, especially the rapid growth of electric vehicles, could <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/should-abu-dhabi-quit-opec-reconsidering-uaes-membership">weaken the importance of oil and the cartel</a> that oversees it.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/10/23/the-end-of-the-oil-age">former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani</a> was reported to have said a quarter-century ago: “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jim Krane has received research funding from the government of Qatar and is affiliated with the Energy Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Finley owns shares in bp. He has consulted for the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center. He is also a member of the US Association for Energy Economics and the National Association for Business Economics.</span></em></p>Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine reprised the risks of energy weaponization, but the oil landscape today and energy security itself are changing.Jim Krane, Fellow in Energy Studies, Baker Institute for Public Policy; Lecturer, Rice UniversityMark Finley, Fellow in Energy and Global Oil, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2136372023-09-19T12:18:28Z2023-09-19T12:18:28ZEV sales growth points to oil demand peaking by 2030 − so why is the oil industry doubling down on production?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548827/original/file-20230918-15-rp390m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4399%2C3377&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tesla brought EVs into the mainstream.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/march-2022-brandenburg-gr%C3%BCnheide-several-model-y-electric-news-photo/1239416892">Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Electric vehicle sales are growing faster than expected around the world, and sales of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles have been falling. Yet, the U.S. government still forecasts an increasing demand for oil, and the oil industry is doubling down on production plans.</p>
<p>Why is that, and what happens if the U.S. projections for growing oil demand are wrong?</p>
<p>I <a href="https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=kc0ETzIAAAAJ&hl=en">study sustainability</a> and global <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31734-1">energy system transformations</a>. Let’s take a closer look at the changes underway.</p>
<h2>EVs’ giant leap forward</h2>
<p>On Sept. 12, 2023, Fatih Birol, director of the <a href="https://www.iea.org/">International Energy Agency</a>, an intergovernmental organization that advises the world’s major economies, drew global attention when he wrote in the Financial Times that the IEA is now <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f6155d7b-2ef7-4f62-a08a-b640b7e87fca">projecting a global peak</a> in demand for oil, gas and coal by 2030.</p>
<p>The new date was a significant leap forward in time compared with previous estimates that the <a href="https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028">peak would not be until the 2030s</a> for oil and even later for gas. It also stood out because the IEA has typically been quite conservative in modeling changes to the global energy system.</p>
<p>Birol pointed to <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022/executive-summary">changes in energy policies</a> and a faster-than-expected rise in clean technologies – including electric vehicles – along with <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-war-in-ukraine-hasnt-left-europe-freezing-in-the-dark-but-it-has-caused-energy-crises-in-unexpected-places-199046">Europe’s shift away from fossil fuels</a> amid Russia’s war in Ukraine as the primary reasons. He wrote that the IEA’s upcoming World Energy Outlook “shows the world is on the cusp of a historic turning point.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People stand near dozens of electric vehicle models in the BYD booth during the 2023 Shenyang International Auto Show." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548825/original/file-20230918-31-8n41ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">EV sales have been growing quickly, particularly in China. China’s BYD produces several of the top-selling models globally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-visit-the-byd-booth-during-the-2023-shenyang-news-photo/1487511212">VCG/VCG via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The United Nations also released its “<a href="https://unfccc.int/documents/631600">global stocktake</a>” report in early September, assessing the world’s progress toward meeting the Paris climate agreement goals of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial temperatures. The report found <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/explaining-global-stocktake-paris-agreement">serious gaps</a> in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions <a href="https://climateanalytics.org/publications/2019/insights-from-the-ipcc-special-report-on-15c-for-the-preparation-of-long-term-strategies/">to net-zero by soon after mid-century</a>. However, it noted two bright spots: The world is more or less on track in the growth in <a href="https://www.pv-tech.org/global-solar-pv-manufacturing-capacity-could-meet-deployment-needs-in-2030-iea/">solar photovoltaics</a> for renewable energy – and in the <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023">growth of electric vehicles</a>.</p>
<p>The dynamics of EV expansion are important because each vehicle that uses electricity instead of gasoline or diesel fuel will depress demand for oil. Even though demand for petroleum products in other sectors, like aviation and petrochemicals, is still increasing, the IEA expects a decline in road transportation’s 50% share of oil consumption to drive an <a href="https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028">overall peak in demand within a few years</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="E663w" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/E663w/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>EVs are now on pace to dominate global car sales by 2030, with fast growth in China in particular, according to analysts at the <a href="https://rmi.org/">Rocky Mountain Institute</a>. If countries continue to upgrade their electricity and charging infrastructure, “the endgame for one quarter of global oil demand will be in sight,” they wrote in a <a href="https://rmi.org/insight/x-change-cars/">new report</a>. As electric trucks become more common, oil demand will likely drop even faster, the analysts wrote.</p>
<p>Global sales of light-duty vehicles already show a <a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/09/the-global-ice-industry-cliff-is-here/">decrease in internal combustion – gasoline and diesel – vehicle sales</a>, mainly due to increasing EV sales, but also due to an <a href="https://www.marklines.com/en/report/global_report_202212">overall decline in vehicle sales</a> that started even before the pandemic.</p>
<h2>So, why is the US projecting oil demand growth?</h2>
<p>Based on the data, it appears that global oil demand will peak relatively soon. Yet, major oil companies say they plan to increase their production, and the U.S. <a href="https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/narrative/consumption/sub-topic-01.php">Energy Information Administration</a> <a href="https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/narrative/consumption/sub-topic-01.php">still projects that global demand</a> for oil and fossil fuels will continue to grow.</p>
<p><a href="https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/TEDB_Ed_40.pdf">Vehicles do last longer today</a> than they did a couple of decades ago, and they are also larger, <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-9-2022-fuel-economy-all-vehicle-classes-has-improved">slowing down efficiency gains</a>. But the Energy Information Administration appears to be <a href="https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?">lowballing projections for EV growth</a>.</p>
<p>The Biden administration, which pushed through large U.S. tax incentives for EV purchases, has taken steps to clear the way for <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3986678-biden-fossil-fuels-drawing-heat/">increasing some oil and natural gas exploration</a>. And <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion">large government subsidies continue flowing</a> to fossil fuel industries in many countries. These contradictions <a href="https://priceofoil.org/2023/09/06/revealed-taxpayer-funded-fossil-fuel-projects-from-the-u-s-germany-and-italy-breach-international-climate-commitments/">undermine the goals of the Paris Agreement</a> and could lead to costly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01356-y">stranded assets</a>.</p>
<h2>What do these trends mean for the oil industry?</h2>
<p>It’s fair to assume that large industries should have a good handle on future developments expected to affect their fields. But they often have a competing priority to ensure that short-term gains are preserved.</p>
<p><a href="https://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/franke_energytransition.pdf">Electric utilities</a> are an example. Most didn’t feel threatened by renewable electricity until penetration expanded quickly in their territories. In response, some have <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/420844-why-utilities-are-making-a-necessary-foray-into-renewables/">lobbied to hold off further progress</a> and invented spurious reasons <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-energy-renewables-natural-gas-grid-politics/">to favor fossil fuels over renewables</a>. </p>
<p>Of course, some companies have <a href="https://www.nexteraenergy.com/sustainability/environment/renewable-energy.html">changed their business models</a> to <a href="https://us.orsted.com/">embrace the renewable energy transition</a>, but these seem to still be in a minority.</p>
<p>Large corporations such as BP and TotalEnergies <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/energy/best-oil-companies-investing-in-renewable-energy/">invest in renewables</a>, but these investments are often offset by equally large <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/shell-bp-boost-profit-sink-investment-in-renewable-energy/a-64656800">investments in new fossil fuel exploration</a>.</p>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182102392/shell-plans-to-increase-fossil-fuel-production-despite-its-net-zero-pledge">Shell</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/07/bp-climate-emissions-oil-profits/">BP</a> recently backpedaled on their previous climate commitments in spite of <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-shell-admits-1-5c-climate-goal-means-immediate-end-to-fossil-fuel-growth/">tacit admissions</a> that increasing oil production is inconsistent with climate change mitigation. Exxon’s CEO said in June 2023 that his company aimed to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-ceo-says-5-year-program-could-double-its-shale-output-2023-06-01/">double its U.S. shale oil production</a> over the next five years.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bernard Looney, in a suit, stands at a podium with the word 'Reimagine BP' on the front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548656/original/file-20230916-29-ftcie1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2020, then-BP CEO Bernard Looney declared that the oil company would achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In 2023, after record profits, BP announced it would increase fossil fuel production investment by about $1 billion a year for the rest of the decade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bernard-looney-speaks-during-an-event-in-london-on-february-news-photo/1200295678">Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>What is happening in the fossil fuel industry seems to be an example of the so-called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Paradox">green paradox</a>,” in which it is rational, from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_rule">profit-maximization point of view</a>, to extract these resources as quickly as possible when faced with the threat of future decreased market value. </p>
<p>That is, if a company can see that in the future its product will make less money or be threatened by environmental policies, it would be likely to sell as much as possible now. As part of that process, it may be very willing to encourage the building of fossil fuel infrastructure that clearly won’t be viable a decade or two in the future, creating what are known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-really-owns-the-oil-industrys-future-stranded-assets-if-you-own-investment-funds-or-expect-a-pension-it-might-be-you-183706">stranded assets</a>.</p>
<p>In the long run, countries encouraged to borrow to make these investments may be stuck with the bill, in addition to the global climate change impacts that will result.</p>
<p>Extractive industries have <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063">known about climate change</a> for decades. But rather than transform themselves into broad-based energy companies, most have doubled down on oil, coal and natural gas. More than <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548683/original/file-20230917-15-qdehk8.png">two dozen U.S. cities, counties and states</a> are now suing fossil fuel companies over the harms caused by climate change and accusing them of misleading the public, with <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FINAL-9-15-COMPLAINT.pdf">California filing the latest lawsuit</a> on Sept. 15, 2023. </p>
<p>The question is whether these companies will be able to successfully adapt to a renewable energy world, or whether they will follow the <a href="https://rhg.com/research/the-hidden-cause-of-americas-coal-collapse/">path of U.S. coal companies</a> and not recognize their own decline until it is too late.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Brecha is also affiliated with Climate Analytics, a global non-profit climate science and policy institute. Opinions and ideas expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Dayton or Climate Analytics. </span></em></p>The International Energy Agency moved up the date when it expects oil demand to peak to before 2030. Electric vehicle growth is a big part of the reason.Robert Brecha, Professor of Sustainability, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994642023-02-09T13:34:20Z2023-02-09T13:34:20ZNew Zealand wants to tax cow burps – here’s why that’s not the best climate solution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508741/original/file-20230207-21-8vqj9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C22%2C4900%2C3506&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cows generate methane as they digest their food. It's a potent greenhouse gas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/austria-salzkammergut-cow-on-meadow-looking-at-royalty-free-image/1125227459">Westend61 via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>New Zealand, where agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change, is proposing <a href="https://environment.govt.nz/publications/pricing-agricultural-emissions-report-under-section-215-of-the-climate-change-response-act-2002/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template">a tax on cow burps</a>. The <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/can-you-tax-a-cows-burps-new-zealand-will-be-the-first-to-try">reason</a> seems simple enough: Cows release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and New Zealand has a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by midcentury. Right now, <a href="https://environment.govt.nz/publications/new-zealands-greenhouse-gas-inventory-1990-2020-snapshot/">the country’s effects on climate change</a> come roughly equally from carbon dioxide and methane.</p>
<p>Worldwide, <a href="https://www.globalmethanepledge.org/">150 governments have committed</a> to cut methane emissions, both from agriculture and by cracking down on the largest source – fugitive leaks from natural gas pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure.</p>
<p>But is methane from cows really as bad for the climate as methane from fossil fuels? And given its shorter lifetime in the atmosphere, is methane as bad as carbon dioxide?</p>
<p>The answers involve renewable resources and the so-called circular economy. Understanding the effectiveness of different strategies is important as countries plan their routes to net-zero emissions, which is necessary for the world to stop further climate change.</p>
<p>Moreover, emissions must not just reach net-zero, they must stay there.</p>
<h2>Targeting methane</h2>
<p>I am a climate scientist who has spent decades studying global warming. Evidence has clearly established that <a href="https://theconversation.com/2022s-supercharged-summer-of-climate-extremes-how-global-warming-and-la-nina-fueled-disasters-on-top-of-disasters-190546">human activities</a> are <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">causing climate change</a>. Humans have released so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since beginning to burn fossil fuels in the 1800s that the accumulated gases are now trapping significantly more heat than is released to space. The result is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-not-to-solve-the-climate-change-problem-187222">global warming</a>.</p>
<p>Some carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. But methane, the second-most important greenhouse gas, lingers in the atmosphere for only <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2022/methane-and-climate-change">about a decade</a> before being oxidized to form carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>Although methane doesn’t last as long, it is many times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the climate. That’s why it’s a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1136061205/biden-methane-emissions-epa-rules-climate-change-gas-prices">target for policymakers</a>.</p>
<p>However, its effects can be misjudged. A <a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator">rough equivalence</a> of the heating from methane to that of carbon dioxide is often used to estimate its effects on the climate, but the number varies by the time frame. </p>
<p>The global warming potential typically used for methane is <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials">28 times that of carbon dioxide for a 100-year period</a>. But a spike in methane has no effect after about 30 years because the methane is well gone by then. So, methane’s effects on temperature are greatly overstated over centuries, while considerably understated over the first 20 years. Indeed, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00226-2">scientists</a> have argued that short-lived climate pollutants such as methane should be split out from long-lived ones such as carbon dioxide when making policy. </p>
<p>Moreover, biogenic sources of carbon, such as from trees or cattle, are renewable, while fossil fuel sources are not.</p>
<p><iframe id="tM5PF" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tM5PF/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Biogenic or fossil?</h2>
<p>Biogenic methane comes from all sorts of livestock – cattle, sheep, goats, deer and even buffalo – and it has a <a href="https://environment.govt.nz/guides/methane-and-other-major-greenhouse-gases">circular life</a>.</p>
<p>It originates as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is taken up by grass and other plants during photosynthesis. Those plants are eaten by animals and then methane is burped out during digestion, or released as flatulence or through decaying manure. Once released, methane stays in the atmosphere for about a decade before it becomes carbon dioxide and is taken up by plants again.</p>
<p>Some carbon is temporarily stored as meat, leather or wool, but it too is eventually recycled. The amount of methane from livestock would be stable were it not for rising demand for animal protein by the ever-increasing global population, leading to increasing livestock on farms.</p>
<p>Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have been in the Earth for millions of years. <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2020/methane-from-oil-gas">Fossil methane</a> is a waste product of coal mines, and also is extracted from shale and other underground deposits as natural gas. So-called fugitive emissions leak from pipelines and abandoned wells, and methane is often flared or vented directly into the atmosphere. There are also often major <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/top_story/methane-cloud-spotted-over-new-mexico/">outbursts</a> from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/02/orphan-wells-infrastructure-law/">accidents</a> that can now be <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2021">tracked from satellite</a>. The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126562195/the-nord-stream-pipelines-have-stopped-leaking-but-the-methane-emitted-broke-rec">Nord Stream gas leak</a> in September 2022, <a href="https://sakerhetspolisen.se/ovriga-sidor/other-languages/english-engelska/press-room/news/news/2022-11-18-confirmed-sabotage-of-the-nord-stream-gas-pipelines.html">likely caused by sabotage</a>, reportedly leaked 500,000 tons of methane.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508753/original/file-20230208-17-pbe06v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Methane leaks were evident in 2019 satellite data from the Permian Basin, a large oil and gas field in Texas and New Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-built-instrument-will-help-to-spot-greenhouse-gas-super-emitters">Global Airborne Observatory/Carbon Mapper, University of Arizona/Arizona State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While biogenic methane ultimately recycles the carbon dioxide that was its source a short time ago, fossil-sourced methane adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Studies have estimated that livestock is responsible for about one-third of global anthropogenic <a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1561-2020">methane emissions</a>, while oil and gas operations represent about 63%.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean countries shouldn’t reduce biogenic methane, too. But the circular life of biogenic methane means that it should be considered separately from fossil methane when determining how to manage emissions to reach net zero by 2050. </p>
<h2>Implications for climate policies</h2>
<p>Many of the actions that governments take today under the guise of net-zero emissions risk passing the harms of climate change down to future generations rather than fundamentally solving the problem. Strategies that aim to reduce carbon from any source, as opposed to focusing on reducing the use of fossil fuels, are an example.</p>
<p>Right now, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is generally treated interchangeably with carbon emissions from clearing forests or from methane emissions. Simple conversion factors, while convenient, mask complicated value judgments. For example, reducing methane may buy a decade of lower temperatures. Reducing fossil carbon, on the other hand, buys thousands of years. </p>
<p>There’s a similar argument to be made about carbon offsets involving trees. Trees take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and use the carbon to create wood, bark, leaves and roots. When the trees die or are used, the carbon is recycled as carbon dioxide. But while planting a new stand of trees may lock up some carbon, most only live for decades, and trees can get diseased or burn in forest fires, meaning they’re temporary. Recent research suggests that the value of trees as <a href="https://theconversation.com/satellites-detect-no-real-climate-benefit-from-10-years-of-forest-carbon-offsets-in-california-193943">carbon offsets</a> is greatly <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426">overestimated</a>. Further, planting <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/anne-salmond-nzs-climate-planting-asking-for-trouble">monoculture tree plantations</a> has drawbacks, especially with regard to biodiversity.</p>
<p>Emissions from burning coal, oil or natural gas can only be credibly offset by removing carbon dioxide and storing it in a form that <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2019.00009/full">will be stable</a> for many thousands of years.</p>
<p>Steadying or reducing livestock numbers and perhaps <a href="https://theconversation.com/feeding-cows-a-few-ounces-of-seaweed-daily-could-sharply-reduce-their-contribution-to-climate-change-157192">changing their feed</a> can stabilize their methane emissions. But to address the climate change crisis long term, I believe it is essential to recognize that the real solution for climate change is to cut emissions of fossil fuels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Trenberth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New Zealand is considering a plan to tax methane from cows. But while cows and cars both emit greenhouse gases, they don’t have the same impact over time.Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, NCAR; Affiliate Faculty, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1986502023-01-27T13:27:37Z2023-01-27T13:27:37ZLA’s long, troubled history with urban oil drilling is nearing an end after years of health concerns<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506677/original/file-20230126-12-fuo62g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C31%2C2896%2C1962&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Active oil wells can often be found next door to homes, office buildings and even schools.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jet-lands-at-los-angeles-international-airport-as-oil-rigs-news-photo/80864709">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/limpact-des-puits-de-petrole-sur-la-sante-le-cas-edifiant-de-los-angeles-198809">Lire cet article en français</a></em></p>
<p>Los Angeles had oil wells pumping in its neighborhoods when Hollywood was in its infancy, and thousands of active wells still dot the city.</p>
<p>These wells can emit toxic chemicals such as benzene and other irritants into the air, often just feet from homes, schools and parks. But now, after nearly a decade of community organizing and studies demonstrating the adverse health impacts on people living nearby, Los Angeles’ long history with urban drilling is nearing an end.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-25/los-angeles-county-blocks-new-oil-wells-mirroring-citywide-ban">unanimous vote</a> on Jan. 24, 2023, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to ban new oil and gas extraction and phase out existing operations. It followed a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/los-angeles-city-council-votes-ban-oil-gas-94371123">similar vote</a> by the Los Angeles City Council a month earlier. The city set a 20-year phaseout period, while the county has yet to set a timetable.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=t4m6sjAAAAAJ&hl=en">environmental health</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bhavna-Shamasunder">researchers</a>, we study the impacts of oil drilling on surrounding communities. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">Our research</a> shows that <a href="http://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15010138">people living near these urban oil operations</a> suffer higher rates of asthma than average, as well as wheezing, eye irritation and sore throats. In some cases, the impact on residents’ lungs is worse than living beside a highway or being exposed to secondhand smoke every day. </p>
<h2>LA was once an oil town with forests of derricks</h2>
<p>Over a century ago, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3985379">first industry to boom</a> in Los Angeles was oil. </p>
<p>Oil was abundant and flowed close to the surface. In early 20th-century California, sparse laws governed mineral extraction, and rights to oil accrued to those who could pull it out of the ground first. This ushered in a period of rampant drilling, with wells and associated machinery crisscrossing the landscape. By the mid-1920s, Los Angeles was one of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3985379?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">largest oil-exporting regions</a> in the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A historic black-and-white photo shows a street with houses, old cars and dozens of oil derricks on the hill behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1924 photo shows the oil derricks on Signal Hill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_City_Views%20(1925%20+).html">Water and Power Museum Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old black-and-white photo of a roller coaster on a pier, with the city behind it and then a long row of oil derricks behind that on a ridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The view across The Pike amusement park and downtown Long Beach, California, in 1940 shows a forest of oil derricks in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_City_Views%20(1925%20+).html">Water and Power Museum Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oil rigs were so pervasive across the region that the Los Angeles Times described them in 1930 as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas079">trees in a forest</a>.” Working-class communities were initially supportive of the industry because it promised jobs but later <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3985379">pushed back</a> as their neighborhoods witnessed explosions and oil spills, along with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-004-1159-0">longer-term damage to land, water and human health</a>.</p>
<p>Tensions over land use, extraction rights and subsequent drops in oil prices due to overproduction eventually resulted in curbs on drilling and a long-standing practice of oil companies’ voluntary “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas079">self-regulation</a>,” such as noise-reduction technologies. The industry began touting these voluntary approaches to deflect governmental regulation.</p>
<p>Increasingly, oil companies disguised their activities with approaches such as operating <a href="https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/hidden-oil-wells/">inside buildings, building tall walls</a> and <a href="https://lbbusinessjournal.com/thums-oil-islands-half-a-century-later-still-unique-still-iconic">designing islands off Long Beach</a> and other sites to blend in with the landscape. Oil drilling was hidden in plain sight. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A silhouetted student with a backpack walks past an oil derrick covered with drawings of flowers outside a school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beverly Hills High School earned money from an oil well, hidden behind walls covered with drawings, that operated until 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/decorative-flowery-exterior-masks-an-oil-rig-along-olympic-news-photo/566019401">Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today there are over 20,000 active, idle or abandoned wells spread across a county of 10 million people. About <a href="https://news.usc.edu/184929/urban-oil-wells-drilling-lung-health-los-angeles-usc-research/">one-third of residents</a> live less than a mile from an active well site, <a href="https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/wellfinder/#openModal/-118.23225/33.87983/12">some right next door</a>.</p>
<p>Since the 2000s, the advance of extractive technologies to access harder-to-reach deposits has led to a resurgence of oil extraction activities. As extraction in some neighborhoods has ramped up, people living in South Los Angeles and other neighborhoods in oil fields have noticed frequent <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-sep-21-la-me-0922-oil-20130922-story.html">odors, nosebleeds and headaches</a>. </p>
<h2>Closer to urban oil drilling, poorer lung function</h2>
<p>The city of Los Angeles has no buffers or setbacks between oil extraction and homes, and approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">75% of active oil or gas wells are located within 500 meters</a> (1,640 feet) of “sensitive land uses,” such as homes, schools, child care facilities, parks or senior residential facilities. </p>
<p>Despite over a century of oil drilling in Los Angeles, until recently there was limited research into the health impacts. Working with <a href="https://envhealthcenters.usc.edu/2021/04/harnessing-the-expertise-of-community-health-workers-for-environmental-health-research.html">community health workers</a> and community-based organizations helped us gauge the impact oil wells are having on residents, particularly on its historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cSfXx7cMNWc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Oil drilling in Los Angeles.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first step was a door-to-door survey of 813 neighbors from 203 households near wells in Las Cienegas oil field, just south and west of downtown. We found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15010138">asthma</a> was significantly more common among people living near South Los Angeles oil wells than among residents of <a href="https://ask.chis.ucla.edu">Los Angeles County as a whole</a>. Nearly half the people we spoke with, 45%, didn’t know oil wells were operating nearby, and 63% didn’t know how to contact local regulatory authorities to report odors or environmental hazards. </p>
<p>Next, we measured lung function of 747 long-term residents, ages 10 to 85, living near two drilling sites. Poor lung capacity, measured as the amount of air a person can exhale after taking a deep breath, and lung strength, how strongly the person can exhale, and are both predictors of health problems including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-012-9750-2">respiratory disease, death from cardiovascular problems</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/thorax.58.5.388">early death in general</a>.</p>
<p>We found that the closer someone lived to an active or recently idle well site, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">the poorer that person’s lung function</a>, even after adjusting for such other risk factors as smoking, asthma and living near a freeway. This research demonstrates a significant relationship between living near oil wells and worsened lung health.</p>
<p>People living up to 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) downwind of a well site showed lower lung function on average than those living farther away and upwind. The effect on their lungs’ capacity and strength was similar to impacts of living near a freeway or, for women, being exposed to secondhand smoke.</p>
<p>We found <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.2c04926">evidence</a> that oil-related contaminants, including toxic metals such as nickel and manganese, are getting into the bodies of the neighbors. This indicates contamination may be getting into the community. </p>
<p><iframe id="g7Qgh" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g7Qgh/7/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Using a community monitoring network in South Los Angeles, we were able to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117519">distinguish oil-related pollution</a> in neighborhoods near wells. We found short-term spikes of air pollutants and methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at monitors <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146194">less than 500 meters, about one-third of a mile, from oil sites</a>.</p>
<p>When oil production at a site <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D1EM00048A">stopped</a>, we observed significant reductions in such toxins as benzene, toluene and n-hexane in the air in adjacent neighborhoods. These <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp123-p.pdf">chemicals</a> are known irritants, carcinogens and reproductive toxins. They are also associated with dizziness, headaches, fatigue, tremors and respiratory system irritation, including difficulty breathing and, at higher levels, impaired lung function. </p>
<h2>Vulnerable communities at risk</h2>
<p>Many of the dozens of active oil wells in South Los Angeles are in historically Black and Hispanic communities that have been marginalized for decades. These neighborhoods are already considered among the <a href="https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30">most highly polluted, with the most vulnerable residents</a> in the state. Residents contend with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35780656/">multiple environmental and social stressors</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing active well sites." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A state app called Well Finder locates active oil wells. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed phasing out oil extraction statewide by 2045.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/wellfinder/#openModal/-118.00909/33.92186/12">State of California 2022</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The city’s timeline for phasing out existing wells is set for 20 years, leaving concerns about continuing health effects during this period. We believe these neighborhoods need sustained attention to reduce the existing health effects, and the city needs a plan for a just transition and cleanup of the oil fields as the areas transition to new uses.</p>
<p><em>This updates an <a href="https://theconversation.com/los-angeles-long-troubled-history-with-urban-oil-drilling-is-nearing-an-end-after-years-of-health-concerns-175983">article</a> originally published Feb. 3, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Johnston receives funding from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bhavna Shamasunder receives funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the 11th Hour Project.</span></em></p>The Los Angeles area has over 20,000 active, idle or abandoned oil wells. The city and county have voted to ban new ones after studies showed health problems in residents living nearby.Jill Johnston, Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern CaliforniaBhavna Shamasunder, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1948892022-12-01T18:55:29Z2022-12-01T18:55:29ZDespite soaring profits, oil companies are not paying enough for their environmental damage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498076/original/file-20221129-24-gs4o1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C35%2C3694%2C2485&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A pumpjack draws out oil and gas from a well head near Calgary in October 2022. There are thousands of inactive oil and gas wells in the province that have not been properly decommissioned.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/despite-soaring-profits--oil-companies-are-not-paying-enough-for-their-environmental-damage" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At the end of the third quarter reporting season in October, the Big Four oilsands producers continued to report record profit levels. Collectively, <a href="https://www.cenovus.com/News-and-Stories/News-releases/2022/2546247">Cenovus</a>, <a href="https://investingnews.com/canadian-natural-resources-limited-announces-2022-third-quarter-results/">CNRL</a>, <a href="https://news.imperialoil.ca/news-releases/news-releases/2022/Imperial-announces-third-quarter-2022-financial-and-operating-results/default.aspx">Imperial Oil</a> and <a href="https://sustainability-prd-cdn.suncor.com/-/media/project/suncor/files/news-releases/2022/2022-11-02-news-release-earnings-q3-2022-en.pdf?modified=20221103001118">Suncor</a> earned $5.8 billion in the third quarter and $23.1 billion in the first nine months of 2022. The average return on capital during the period was almost 25 per cent. </p>
<p>The only minor hiccup was <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9246922/suncor-3q-report-net-loss-fort-hills-writedown/">Suncor’s reported loss</a> — primarily due to a <a href="https://sustainability-prd-cdn.suncor.com/-/media/project/suncor/files/news-releases/2022/2022-11-02-news-release-earnings-q3-2022-en.pdf">non-cash impairment charge of $3.4 billion</a> against its Fort Hills assets. Despite the write-down, Suncor still <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9229869/suncor-teck-deal-fort-hills-oilsands/">spent $1 billion buying Teck Resources’ stake in the Fort Hills oilsands project</a>.</p>
<p>However, apart from Suncor’s purchase, these companies are not reinvesting in their core businesses. This cash bonanza has implications for Canadian consumers, government taxation and royalty policies and environmental policy.</p>
<h2>Consumers left in the lurch</h2>
<p>Unlike bank prime lending rates <a href="https://wowa.ca/banks/prime-rates-canada">that change every six weeks or so</a>, Canadians heavily dependent on their gas-motored cars or trucks face difficult choices in balancing their budgets with higher housing costs.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1810000701&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=3.1&pickMembers%5B2%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2020&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2021&referencePeriods=20200101%2C20210101">Statistics Canada</a>, housing accounts for more than 30 per cent of a household’s expenses, and transportation accounts for 16 per cent. </p>
<p><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221116/dq221116a-eng.htm">Year-over-year inflation for gasoline in October 2022 was 17.8 per cent</a>. The homeowners’ replacement cost index, a proxy for the price of new homes, increased by 6.9 per cent. Mortgage interest costs <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/how-the-relationship-between-interest-rate-hikes-and-inflation-plays-out-in-canada-1.6155914">increased 11.4 per cent over last year</a> — the highest increase since February 1991.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person fuels up their car at an Esso gas station" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498071/original/file-20221129-24-6psrvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A motorist fuels up a vehicle at an Esso gas station after the price of a litre of regular gasoline reached a new high of $2.40 in Vancouver in October 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Canadians who have personal vehicles, those who rely on natural gas for heating and people who have mortgages are under enormous strain. <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/07/01/ontario-gas-fuel-tax-cut-in-effect/">Ontario</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-danielle-smith-inflation-plan/">Alberta</a> have reduced gasoline taxes, but these are short-term political measures that support the fossil fuel industry by maintaining demand for gas and diesel. </p>
<p>The wait times for electric vehicles is up to one year <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/10/29/want-to-buy-an-electric-vehicle-in-toronto-good-luck-star-investigation-finds-wait-times-of-up-to-a-year.html">in Toronto</a> and well into 2024 for <a href="https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/11/11/canada-electric-car-delays/">buyers in Vancouver</a>.</p>
<p>Oilsands shareholders, who are mostly foreigners, are enjoying huge profits while consumers are bearing the brunt of rising energy prices. </p>
<p>The majority of the shares <a href="http://abpolecon.ca/2022/09/07/who-owns-the-big-four/">for Canada’s biggest oil companies are held by institutional investors</a>. These Canadian institutional investors, like TD Investment Management, hold anywhere from a mere three per cent of the shares of Imperial, to nearly 20 per cent of CNRL’s shares.</p>
<h2>Big Oil isn’t reinvesting profits</h2>
<p>During the first nine months of 2022, $6.7 billion was paid out in dividends, with <a href="https://investingnews.com/canadian-natural-resources-limited-announces-2022-third-quarter-results/">nearly two-thirds by CNRL</a>. During the same period, $15.6 billion shares were repurchased. These share buybacks reward shareholders because reducing the shares outstanding means higher earnings per share for shareholders.</p>
<p>These buybacks also signal to the market that the company’s board and management feel these purchases are the best way to manage capital and cash flow. Significantly it also means that the company is not investing to either increase or sustain operating cash flow. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A high angle shot of a building that says Suncor Energy Centre on it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498068/original/file-20221129-9456-m120p3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Despite Suncor’s net loss in the third reporting quarter, it still bought out Teck Resources’ stake in the Fort Hills oilsands project for approximately $1 billion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to share buybacks and dividends, Cenovus, CNRL, Imperial Oil and Suncor have collectively repaid $10 billion in debt. Based on their financial statements, I estimate $32.5 billion of available cash flow was not reinvested in the business. In fact, during 2022, all four companies’ depreciation, depletion, and amortization — which measures the non-cash costs of assets aging — exceeded capital investment by about $1.5 billion.</p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://arcenergyinst.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/221115-Energy-Charts.pdf">ARC Energy Research Institute report</a>, in 2015, the Canadian industry’s after-tax cash flow was $30 billion and $55 billion was reinvested in conventional and bitumen production. In 2022, with an estimated after-tax cash flow of $152 billion, ARC Energy Research Institute estimates that only $32 billion and $10 billion will be reinvested in conventional and bitumen production, respectively.</p>
<h2>Governments are benefiting</h2>
<p>The federal and Alberta governments are enjoying a bonanza due to higher taxes on profits and royalties. I estimate the Big Four paid about $15.2 billion in royalties to provincial governments so far this year.</p>
<p><a href="http://abpolecon.ca/2022/09/02/is-oil-sands-consolidation-a-threat-to-alberta-democracy/">I have estimated that these four companies</a> will be responsible for at least a quarter of Alberta’s own source revenue (excluding federal transfers) this fiscal year. Based on financial statements from each oil company, I estimate their taxes, as a per cent of net income for the period, run from 13 per cent for Suncor (due to its write-downs) to 36 per cent for Cenovus.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-big-four-oilsands-companies-influence-threatens-alberta-democracy-argues-political-scientist-188567">The Big Four oilsands companies' influence threatens Alberta democracy, argues political scientist</a>
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<p>Some of the CEOs of the Big Four have not been shy at pointing out how much tax and royalties they are paying to governments. <a href="https://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2022/11/4/canadian-natural-touts-its-economic-contribution-a/">CNRL president Tim McKay</a> and the leaders of Cenovus and Imperial Oil have also stressed the size of their companies’ contributions to government coffers. </p>
<p>The Alberta treasury’s dependence on the royalties and taxes from only four companies present a major problem, as identified by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith last year in a <a href="https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/AF16_AB-Key-Challenges_Smith.pdf">paper for the School of Public Policy</a> when she was <a href="https://albertaenterprisegroup.com/2021/04/23/press-release-aeg-appoints-danielle-smith-president/">head of the Alberta Enterprise Group</a>. It will be interesting to see how Smith approaches this problem in next February’s budget. </p>
<h2>Environmental liabilities</h2>
<p>While the oilsands industry divests, it hopes to have federal taxpayers — and possibly those in Alberta — pay the cost of <a href="https://www.bennettjones.com/Blogs-Section/Canadian-Budget-Proposes-New-Investment-Tax-Credit-For-Carbon-Capture-Utilization-and-Storage">subsidizing carbon capture and underground storage</a>. This capital investment, now promised by the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-oil-sands-net-zero-projects/">Pathways Alliance to invest $24 billion</a>, remains the industry’s sole hope of continuing to operate past 2030.</p>
<p>At the same time, the industry has booked $10.6 billion in decommissioning liabilities for oil and gas wells, pipelines and facilities. There are <a href="https://www.alberta.ca/oil-and-gas-liabilities-management.aspx">thousands of abandoned oil wells and decommissioned pipelines</a> in Alberta alone. </p>
<p>However, annual expenditures by the Big Four to address environmental liabilities run less than $1 billion and are not separately recorded in the statement of expenses. There is a clear gap between the costs of environmental damage done by these companies and the amount they are required to mitigate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close-up shot of a man in a suit and glasses speaking into a microphone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498072/original/file-20221129-14-blhiqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alberta Auditor General Doug Wylie speaks about the findings from an independent investigation related to the International Centre of Regulatory Excellence at the Alberta Energy Regulator in Edmonton in October 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.oag.ab.ca/news/oag-news-release-june-2021-reports/">a June 2021 news release from Alberta’s auditor general</a>:
“After six years of analysis, the department has not decided if and how the security calculation should change.”</p>
<p>The auditor general <a href="https://www.oag.ab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/oag-aep-aer-trans-env-liabilites-fs-june-2021-report.pdf">also found a lack of clarity between the Department of Energy and the Alberta Energy Regulator</a>. The Alberta government reportedly “has not adopted a consistent ranking system for contaminated sites to determine which are a priority to clean up.”</p>
<p>The Alberta government has failed to ensure environmental liabilities are adequately accounted for and that progress is being made to <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/oilsands-tailings-ponds-growth/">address the province’s massive tailings ponds made up of byproducts from oilsands mining</a>. Incredibly, when asked about the oil industry’s record cash flows and remediation liabilities, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8254763/alberta-oil-price-spike-abandoned-well-cleanup/">former energy minister Sonya Savage stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The current spike in oil prices isn’t enough reason to require the industry to spend more on cleaning up the tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells in the province.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a recent <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-alberta-oil-economic-boom/"><em>Globe and Mail</em> article</a> pointed out, Alberta’s present good fortune is a mirage because the industry is not re-investing. This has serious ramifications for Alberta’s rural economy, and the Fort McMurray region in particular. </p>
<p>The main driver in Alberta’s economy over the past two decades has been the oilsands industry — <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-provincial-sales-tax-is-the-solution-to-albertas-fiscal-roller-coaster-191147">if bitumen’s future is uncertain, so is Alberta’s economy</a>. </p>
<p>Alberta, like a one-company town, faces a clear and present danger. Is there a Plan B to tilt Alberta away from its bitumen addiction? How will Smith reduce reliance on oilsands royalties? These are pressing questions that must be answered by the Alberta government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert L. Ascah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Alberta government is failing to ensure environmental liabilities are adequately accounted for and that progress is being made to address the province’s massive tailings ponds.Robert L. Ascah, Research Fellow, The Parkland Institute, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1897642022-10-17T12:30:47Z2022-10-17T12:30:47ZGetting to ‘net-zero’ emissions: How energy leaders envision countering climate change in the future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487641/original/file-20221002-13-1n87c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C24%2C5411%2C3278&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many energy leaders see fossil fuel use continuing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/electricity-pylons-and-wind-turbines-stand-beside-the-rwe-news-photo/510814708">Volker Hartmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the U.S. government promising over US$360 billion in clean energy incentives under the <a href="https://theconversation.com/big-new-incentives-for-clean-energy-arent-enough-the-inflation-reduction-act-was-just-the-first-step-now-the-hard-work-begins-188693">Inflation Reduction Act</a>, energy companies are already lining up investments. It’s a huge opportunity, and analysts project that it could help <a href="https://repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_IRA_Prelminary_Report_2022-08-04.pdf">slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions</a> by <a href="https://rhg.com/research/inflation-reduction-act/">about 40%</a> within the decade.</p>
<p>But in conversations with energy industry leaders in recent months, we have heard that financial incentives alone aren’t enough to meet the nation’s goal of reaching <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/22/fact-sheet-president-biden-sets-2030-greenhouse-gas-pollution-reduction-target-aimed-at-creating-good-paying-union-jobs-and-securing-u-s-leadership-on-clean-energy-technologies/">net-zero emissions by 2050</a>. </p>
<p>In the view of some energy sector leaders, reaching net zero emissions will require more pressure from regulators and investors and accepting technologies that aren’t usually thought of as the best solutions to the climate crisis.</p>
<h2>‘Net-zero,’ with natural gas</h2>
<p>In spring 2022, we facilitated a <a href="https://celp.psu.edu/energyroundtable.pdf">series of conversations</a> at Penn State University around energy and climate with leaders at several major energy companies – including Shell USA, and electric utilities American Electric Power and Xcel Energy – as well as with leaders at the Department of Energy and other public-sector agencies.</p>
<p>We asked them about the technologies they see the U.S. leaning on to develop an energy system with zero net greenhouse gases by 2050.</p>
<p>Their answers provide some insight into how energy companies are thinking about a net-zero future that will require extraordinary changes in how the world produces and manages energy.</p>
<p>We heard a lot of agreement among energy leaders that getting to net-zero emissions is not a matter of finding some future magic bullet. They point out that many effective technologies are available to reduce emissions and to capture those emissions that can’t be avoided. <a href="https://celp.psu.edu/energyroundtable.pdf">What is not an option</a>, in their view, is to leave existing technologies in the rearview mirror.</p>
<p>They expect natural gas in particular to play a large, and possibly growing, role in the U.S. energy sector for many years to come.</p>
<p><iframe id="IiPh9" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/IiPh9/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>What’s behind this view, energy leaders say, is their deep degree of skepticism that renewable energy technologies alone can meet the nation’s future energy demands at a reasonable cost.</p>
<p>Costs for wind and solar power and for energy storage have <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/the-decreasing-cost-of-renewables-unlikely-to-plateau-anytime-soon/">declined rapidly</a> in recent years. But dependence on these technologies has some grid operators worried that they can’t count on the wind blowing or sun shining at the right time – especially as more <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/23/californias-lofty-climate-goals-clash-with-reality-00058466">electric vehicles and other new users</a> connect to the power grid.</p>
<p>Energy companies are rightly nervous about energy grid failures – no one wants a repeat of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-texas-electricity-system-produced-low-cost-power-but-left-residents-out-in-the-cold-155527">outages in Texas</a> in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/power-outages-across-the-plains-4-questions-answered-about-weather-driven-blackouts-155345">winter of 2021</a>. But some energy companies, even those with lofty climate goals, also <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jc-kibbey/utility-accountability-101-how-do-utilities-make-money">profit</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/08/oil-companies-profits-inflation/">handsomely</a> from traditional energy technologies and have extensive investments in fossil fuels. Some have <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/short-circuiting-policy-9780190074265?cc=ca&lang=en&">resisted clean energy mandates</a>.</p>
<p>In the view of many of these energy companies, a net-zero energy transition is not necessarily a renewable energy transition.</p>
<p>Instead, they see a net-zero energy transition requiring massive deployment of other technologies, including advanced nuclear power and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-not-to-solve-the-climate-change-problem-187222">carbon capture and sequestration technologies</a> that capture carbon dioxide, either before it’s released or from the air, and <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/whats-difference-between-geologic-and-biologic-carbon-sequestration">then store it</a> in nature or pump it underground. So far, however, attempts to deploy some of these technologies at scale have been plagued with <a href="https://www.ans.org/news/article-3949/vogtle-project-update-cost-likely-to-top-30-billion/%22%22">high costs</a>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-continue-to-express-mixed-views-about-nuclear-power/">public opposition</a> and <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/ccs-hubs-climate-fix-or-boon-for-fossil-fuels/">serious questions</a> about their environmental impacts.</p>
<h2>Think globally, act regionally</h2>
<p>Another key takeaway from our roundtable discussions with energy leaders is that how clean energy is deployed and what net-zero looks like will vary by region.</p>
<p>What sells in Appalachia, with its natural-resource-driven economy and manufacturing base, may not sell or even be effective in other regions. Heavy industries like steel require tremendous heat as well as chemical reactions that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-challenge-of-decarbonizing-heavy-industry/">electricity just can’t replace</a>. The economic displacement from abandoning coal and natural gas production in these regions raises questions about who bears the burden and who benefits from shifting sources of energy. </p>
<p>Opportunities also vary by region. <a href="https://www.lewistownsentinel.com/opinion/editorials/2022/08/state-has-rare-opportunity-with-rare-earth-elements/">Waste from Appalachian mines</a> could boost domestic supplies of materials critical to a cleaner energy grid. Some coastal regions, on the other hand, could drive decarbonization efforts with offshore wind power. </p>
<p>At a regional scale, industry leaders said, it can be easier to identify shared goals. The <a href="https://api.misoenergy.org/MISORTWD/lmpcontourmap.html">Midcontinent Independent System Operator, known as MISO</a>, which manages the power grid in the upper Midwest and parts of the South, is a good example.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="U.S. map showing MISO and other power grid operators." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487640/original/file-20221002-13-awfnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Among the major power grid operators, MISO has a broad, varied territory, which also extends into Canada, which can make management decisions more difficult.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ferc.gov/electric-power-markets">Federal Energy Regulatory Commission</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When its coverage area was predominantly in the upper Midwest, MISO could bring regional parties together with a shared vision of more opportunities for wind energy development and higher electric reliability. It was able to produce an effective multistate power grid plan to integrate renewables.</p>
<p>However, as utilities from more far-flung (and less windy) states joined MISO, they <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/moment-of-truth-for-grid-expansion-who-pays/">challenged these initiatives</a> as not bringing benefits to their local grids. The challenges were not successful but have raised questions about how widely costs and benefits can be shared.</p>
<h2>Waiting for the right kind of pressure</h2>
<p>Energy leaders also said that companies are not enthusiastic about taking on risks that low-carbon energy projects will increase costs or degrade grid reliability without some kind of financial or regulatory pressure.</p>
<p>For example, tax credits for electric vehicles are great, but powering these vehicles could require a lot more zero-carbon electricity, not to mention a major national transmission grid upgrade to move that clean electricity around.</p>
<p>That could be fixed with “<a href="https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Innovation-Outlook-Smart-Charging">smart charging</a>” – technologies that can charge vehicles during times of surplus electricity or even use electric cars to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/electric-vehicles-could-rescue-the-us-power-grid/">supply some of the grid’s needs</a> on hot days. However, state utility regulators often dissuade companies from investing in power grid upgrades to meet these needs out of fear that customers will wind up footing large bills or technologies will not work as promised.</p>
<p><iframe id="mh2AF" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/mh2AF/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Energy companies do not yet seem to be feeling major pressure from investors to move away from fossil fuels, either.</p>
<p>For all the talk about environmental, social and governance concerns that industry leaders need to prioritize – known as ESG – we heard during the roundtable that <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/blackrocks-larry-fink-dont-divest-fossil-fuels-stay-game">investors are not moving much money</a> out of energy companies whose responses to ESG concerns are not satisfactory. With little pressure from investors, energy companies themselves have few good reasons to take risks on clean energy or to push for changes in regulations.</p>
<h2>Leadership needed</h2>
<p>These conversations reinforced the need for more leadership on climate issues from lawmakers, regulators, energy companies and shareholders.</p>
<p>If the energy industry is stuck because of antiquated regulations, then we believe it’s up to the public and forward-looking leaders in business and government and investors to push for change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Seth Blumsack receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Heising Simons Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara B. Fowler receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal Aviation Administration. </span></em></p>Roundtable discussions with leaders from major energy companies reveal a lack of pressure from regulators or investors and a strong belief that fossil fuel use will continue for years to come.Seth Blumsack, Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics and International Affairs, Penn StateLara B. Fowler, Interim Director, Penn State Sustainability Institute, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1900882022-09-11T16:13:05Z2022-09-11T16:13:05ZAfter oil: what Malaysia and Iran may look like in a post-fossil-fuel future<p>As the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">devastation of climate change</a> makes the need to decarbonise clearer by the day, countries face the question of what to do with their old fossil fuel infrastructure. While some <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-activism-has-so-far-been-fairly-peaceful-heres-why-that-might-change-185625">environmental activists</a> have taken to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/21/us/dakota-access-pipeline-vandalism/index.html">sabotaging</a> the carbon economy on the back of its emissions in the Global North, the picture is different in oil-producing countries of the Global South, where energy infrastructure has fed communities for decades. There, the emphasis is placed on memory and institutionalisation.</p>
<h2>Oil’s conquest of Iran and Malaysia</h2>
<p>The cases of Malaysia and Iran, where oil has significantly contributed to economic growth, give us a glimpse into how authorities are currently reckoning with their fossil fuel heritage. In the 20th century, the arrival of international oil companies in the major port cities on the Persian Gulf in Iran and the South China Sea in Malaysia transformed the built environment, accelerated urbanisation and impacted peoples’ everyday lives. Even today, the dynamics and actors of oil in Iran and Malaysia continue to reshape industry, society, culture, and politics while leaving their mark on the built environment and urban spaces.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483306/original/file-20220907-9232-ap277n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first oil rig in Miri, a city in Sarawak, northeastern Malaysia, located near the border of Brunei.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_first_oil_rig_in_Miri_(Grand_Old_Lady).JPG">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Founded in 1978, the <a href="https://ticcih.org/">International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage</a> (TICCIH) is an international organisation established to explore, protect, conserve and explain the remains of industrialisation. In 2020, it published the <a href="https://ticcih.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Oil-industry-thematic-report.pdf">first global assessment of the heritage of petroleum production</a>, the oil industry and the places, structures, sites, and landscapes that might be chosen to conserve for their historical, technical, social, or architectural attributes. <a href="https://ticcih.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Oil-industry-thematic-report.pdf">In a 2020 report</a>, the organisation defined the heritage of the petroleum industry as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“the most significant fixed, tangible evidence for the discovery, exploitation, production, and consumption of petroleum products and their impact on human and natural landscapes”.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Iran’s petroleum museums</h2>
<p>Less than a decade ago, Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum began to consider establishing <a href="http://www.petromuseum.ir/content/32/Editorial/695/Iran-Petroleum-Museum-Introduction-and-Goals">museums</a> with a view to preserving the country’s industrial heritage. Those in the <a href="https://philpapers.org/archive/MEHPIM.pdf">port city of Adaban</a> in the country’s southwest, include an old refinery, gas station, and the oldest oil-related technical training school. In sections of the old ports, passersby can appreciate cranes and heavy machinery, such as the <a href="http://www.petromuseum.ir/content/30/Treasury-of-Objects/713/Akwan-Crane"><em>Akwan</em></a> and <a href="http://www.petromuseum.ir/content/30/Treasury-of-Objects/722/Sulfur-Crane"><em>Sulfur</em></a> cranes, as well as an exhibition about the reconstruction of the refineries following the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).</p>
<p>The country is projecting to open other <a href="https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/457071/Petroleum-museum-to-be-established-in-southwest-Iran">oil museums in major oil port cities</a>. One of them is Masjed Suleiman, a city in the southwestern province of Khuzestan widely recognised as the birthplace of the oil industry in the Middle East. Its museum hosts the oldest oil recovery site in the region. In Tehran, the <a href="https://en.shana.ir/news/316106/5-Petro-Museums-across-Iran">Museum of Oil Industry Technology</a> will detail the nature and importance of oil, gas, and petrochemicals since 1901. It was in that year that the British speculator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Knox_D%27Arcy">William D’Arcy</a> received a concession to explore and develop southern Iran’s oil resources.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483297/original/file-20220907-18-i50gah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Museums of the Iranian oil industry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Iran Petroleum Museums and Documents</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When the oil industry refuses to die</h2>
<p>In Malaysia, the oil industry is omnipresent in everyday life, which raises challenges to global decarbonisation efforts. The national oil company Petronas is visible everywhere, from the dissemination of scholarships, the establishment of a university, and the iconic Petronas Twin Towers to the <a href="https://theses.gla.ac.uk/337/1/2008ishakphd.pdf">transformation of sleepy towns into sprawling industrial complexes</a>. The industry goes back to the early 1900s, when oil was struck in the jungles of Miri, Sarawak, under British rule.</p>
<p>The conservation of Malaysia’s oil legacy has proven somewhat challenging, as most rigs are located offshore and sites still very much in use. Efforts have also been limited and lack a centralised plan. In a federal nation, each state dictates its own policies, which extends to museums. Under the Sarawak Tourism Board, the <a href="https://sarawaktourism.com/attraction/canada-hill/">oil rig in Miri</a> has been transformed into a museum and tourist site but remains the only one of its kind.</p>
<p>Conservation efforts have mainly focused on education with an emphasis on science and technology. Most attractions, such as the <a href="https://petrosains.com.my">Petrosains Discovery Centre</a> and the <a href="https://www.utp.edu.my/Pages/Home.aspx">Petronas University of Technology</a>, prioritise public awareness and learning. Malaysia’s national narrative is consistently upbeat – that the oil industry has improved society, transformed of remote villages, advanced educational opportunities, and led to dramatic changes in landscapes and cityscapes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483302/original/file-20220907-23-hg03kz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An oil rig off the coast of Malaysia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided/Getty</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Toward post-pandemic and post-oil futures</h2>
<p>Malaysia and Iran have taken different approaches when preserving the oil industry as part of their <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/MEHTFL">tangible and intangible cultural heritage</a>. Nonetheless, a common element of is to separate the oil industry from its imperial pasts by preserving historical sites and narrating them as part of the national narrative.</p>
<p>For Malaysia, Petronas and the oil industry is promoted as a <a href="https://www.petronas.com/our-brand/festive-ad/tv-commercials">success story</a>, intertwining petrol and nationalism. The preservation of the Miri oil rig as a tourist site serves the dual purpose of an attempt to safeguard the historical value of the location and to integrate it as a part of Sarawak’s story. </p>
<p>However, rising concerns about climate change, the environment, and corporate responsibility are increasing pressure on oil companies to reduce their carbon footprint by supporting clean and renewable energy, but these efforts appear to lag behind companies such as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-car-chargers-overtake-pumps-profitability-race-2022-01-14/">British Petroleum, which has moved into electric charging and renewable energy</a>. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic caused consumer demand for oil to plummet, which will likely continue to depress Iranian and Malaysian exports for the months to come.</p>
<h2>The impact of the Covid-19 and climate crises</h2>
<p>In the case of Iran, the <a href="https://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/Covid-19-and-oil-price-crash-twin-crises-impacting-saudi-iran-relations">Covid-19 crisis</a> and the <a href="https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Iran-Considers-Allowing-People-To-Invest-In-Oil-On-Local-Exchange.html">fluctuations in oil prices</a> coincide with intensified sanctions by the United States against Iran, also known as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09700161.2020.1841099?journalCode=rsan20">“maximum pressure campaign”</a>. Despite its rich oil and gas resources, the country needs new technology investments and development plans to prepare for the post-fossil-fuel future. However, that will be hard to achieve without resolving <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-is-more-relaxed-about-oil-spike-than-europe-which-helps-explain-differences-over-iran-129476">US-Iran tensions</a> and easing sanctions. To balance future economic growth with social development and environmental protection, Iran needs to invest more in plans for sustainable development and transition to <a href="https://theconversation.com/oil-why-higher-prices-will-complicate-the-energy-transition-157199">less environmentally harmful energy sources</a>.</p>
<p>Malaysia’s response acknowledges of the twin effects of Covid-19 and global warming: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/malaysias-petronas-sees-oil-demand-fragile-uncertain-2021-12-28/">change in weather patterns and a decrease in demand for oil</a>. Since the 2010s, there has been some movement in the energy sector to prepare for the post oil future. Over nearly a decade, Petronas has focused on <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/malaysias-petronas-launches-clean-energy-firm-lead-carbon-free-push-2022-06-16/">solar power, wind energy and clean hydrogen</a>, pledging to <a href="https://www.petronas.com/our-business/clean-energy-solutions">achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 80,000 readers look to The Conversation France’s newsletter for expert insights into the world’s most pressing issues</em>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/newsletters/la-newsletter-quotidienne-5?utm_source=inline-70ksignup">Sign up now</a>]</p>
<p>But it took until 2020 amid the Covid-19 crisis and growing international awareness over the climate emergency for momentum to pick up. In 2021, the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources set targets to <a href="https://www.seda.gov.my/reportal/myrer/">decarbonise the country by 45% by 2030</a>. While these efforts have been applauded, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbuil.2020.00021/full">some hindrances</a> remain, such as financial constraints and a lack of engagement with nongovernmental organisations.</p>
<h2>Lessons from Malaysia’s palm oil heritage</h2>
<p>Given changing global attitudes toward the oil industry, the question arises how the industrial heritage of Malaysia and Iran can be envisioned. Will oil rigs become relics of human greed instead of human advancement? And how will the national narrative reconcile this new reality with the importance of oil in the countries’ decolonisation process?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483292/original/file-20220907-18-ouj692.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1950s British newspaper describes Abadan as ‘a monument of British enterprise and industry’ (September 8, 1951).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Illustrated London News</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Malaysia, it’s a question that has already been asked regarding <a href="https://theconversation.com/palm-oil-boycott-could-actually-increase-deforestation-sustainable-products-are-the-solution-106733">palm oil and deforestation</a>. Environmental activists in the country and abroad have highlighted their negative impact, which resulted in poor publicity for the country. However, through government engagement with youth and activists, there has been some improvement with how palm oil is viewed especially with regards <a href="https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/mspo-sustainable-palm-oil-redefined">to sustainability efforts</a>.</p>
<p>Oil heritage perhaps needs to walk a similar path, encouraging honest conversations between policymakers, NGOs, industry stakeholders and historical organisations. The Covid-19 pandemic has also provided vital lessons and introduced new practices emphasising corporate responsibility toward workers. Improved governmental cooperation has also shown that it is possible to work toward common goals, which can be expanded to issues such as heritage. If implemented appropriately, such approaches may spell a bright future for how we view oil as part of a national narrative.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/next50/">50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention</a> (16 November 2022): World Heritage as a source of resilience, humanity and innovation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>With accelerating climate change making the need to decarbonise clearer by the day, two oil-dependent countries weigh how to preserve and present their historical fossil fuel infrastructure.Rowena Abdul Razak, Guest Teacher in International History, London School of Economics and Political ScienceAsma Mehan, Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urban History, Texas Tech UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812982022-07-14T13:51:38Z2022-07-14T13:51:38Z100 years of pop music in Nigeria: what shaped four eras<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474073/original/file-20220714-9528-riyftf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and his band in Harlem, New York, 1989.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 shut down nearly all physical and social human activities. For musical practice this meant near death. Performing music is, after all, one of the oldest forms of social human engagement.</p>
<p>In Nigeria, the shutdown of concerts and public music performances was swift. Not even the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nigerian-civil-war">Nigerian–Biafran War</a> of 1967 to 1970 could shut down all of Nigeria. In fact, popular music activities boomed in Lagos as bombs rained on Biafra. </p>
<p>The pandemic was a watershed moment and offers a compelling reason to trace the trajectory and evolution of popular music in Nigeria 100 years ago since the birth of the modern state. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/18125980.2021.1958696">study</a> I surveyed the various political, economic and social events, trends and choices that characterised the 98 years between 1922 and 2020, giving consideration to how they shaped popular music practices and experiences in and of Nigeria.</p>
<p>Nigeria became a modern state in 1914 when British colonial powers <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/lord-lugard-created-nigeria-104-years-ago">amalgamated</a> the northern and southern protectorates into one unit. A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK327Yn1041LnQlDoL_D-eEQH-vH5MheP">music recording</a> in London in 1922 by Rev Josiah Ransome-Kuti (grandfather of music icon <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-provocateur-fela-kuti-who-used-sex-and-politics-to-confront-58599">Fela Kuti</a>) is regarded as the first formal effort at commercialising and “popularising” Nigerian music. </p>
<p>From that beginning, four periods emerged from the study: I called them the foggy years, the interactive-budding period, the liberal period and the mononationalist period.</p>
<h2>1922–1944: juju and palm-wine music</h2>
<p>For the first 22 years there was a foggy or unclear direction in the emergence of popular music practices in urban Nigeria. In this short time, two world wars and internal economic and sociopolitical tensions interfered with and delayed the growth of popular music. They limited social life among the youth, calling young men to enrol into the West African Frontier Force that fought for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Lugard#ref162502">Britain</a>.</p>
<p>These years witnessed early recordings by musician <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/1427104-Domingo-Justus">Domingo Justus</a> and political activist <a href="https://blackplaqueproject.com/biography/ladipo-solanke/">Ladipo Solanke</a>. The early recorded music was sung in the style of a hymn in a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba</a> church, accompanied by plucked string instruments like the banjo.</p>
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<p>The arrival of the guitar was followed by the rise of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/juju-music">Jùjú music</a> style in Lagos. Jùjú was basically a modern <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba-language">Yoruba-language</a> reinterpretation of its traditional, precolonial Àsìkò music with the principal instrument known as jùjú (the tambourine). It was led by such artists as Tunde King, whose song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eTISSYI5sA">Aronke Macaulay</a> was produced in 1937. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/palm-wine-music">Palm-wine music</a> emerged, expressing a combination of styles but mostly accompanied by guitars and banjos and performed at palm wine drinking bars in the emerging urban areas. It was championed by Israel Nwaoba, G.T. Ọnwụka and others. Also notable is the appearance of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AquQg1Ifqg">Ọnịcha Native Orchestra</a>, which combined only musical instruments of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Igbo">Igbo people</a> while exploring various social themes and trends in their native singing style.</p>
<p>The church, the guitar and the tavern all influenced early popular music in Nigeria.</p>
<h2>1945–1969: highlife and civil war</h2>
<p>The next 24 years saw interaction and budding among Nigerians as a new sociopolitical order emerged from the ashes of the Second World War. A <a href="https://www.rescue.org/article/african-nations-struggle-independence">wave</a> of decolonisation and talk of independence spread throughout colonial Africa. There was increased participation of Nigerians in mainstream social and political affairs. </p>
<p>With this a new generation of musicians emerged who would – through extensive interactions across nations and personalities – forge a decolonised popular music culture. They moved from the colonial influences they had been subjected to from birth. </p>
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<p>It was at this time that Nigerian <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/highlife-African-music">highlife</a> music and the highlife music of Ghana and other nations evolved. It spread along the West African coast, essentially from increased cultural interactions between Africa and the West. “High” was in the name because highlife was reserved for “highly” placed Africans resident in urban centres. </p>
<p>It mostly adopted simple Western tonality, chords and instruments (like guitars, brass horns and bands) to perform popular themes (like love, mourning and joy), either in local languages, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-west-africas-pidgins-deserve-full-recognition-as-official-languages-101844">pidgin</a> or English. The marching bands of the colonial military formations were a major influence in the emergence of highlife. A few of the early notable exponents were <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bobby-benson-mn0002293410">Bobby Benson</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/victor-olaiya-stadium-hotel-highlife-and-nostalgia-136072">Victor Olaiya</a>, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/680972-Steven-Amechi-His-Rhythm-Skies">Stephen Amaechi</a>, <a href="https://www.naxos.com/Bio/Person/Samuel_Akpabot/17615">Samuel Akpabot</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rex-lawson-mn0001209429/biography">Rex Lawson</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/victor-olaiya-stadium-hotel-highlife-and-nostalgia-136072">Victor Olaiya: Stadium Hotel, Highlife, and nostalgia</a>
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<p>During this period, female artists joined the popular music industry for the first time, among them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh0navM_hhzN-q9hK8QQPO5DXqb-BvgTV">Foyeke Ajangila</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/madam-comfort-omoge-mn0000230994/biography">Comfort Omoge</a>. And while US-influenced jazz and twist styles were introduced in Nigeria, Jùjú was also being championed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nigerian-civil-war">Nigerian–Biafran War</a> brought the era to an end by 1969.</p>
<h2>1970–1999: Afrobeat and oil</h2>
<p>The liberal period marked the most diverse and expansive moment of popular music practices in Nigeria so far. After the war, regional popular music styles and practices came to the fore. And new influences came with imports of foreign popular music such as pop (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Jackson">Michael Jackson</a>), rock (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Beatles">Beatles</a>), marabi (<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-iconic-singer-miriam-makeba-and-her-art-of-activism-178230">Miriam Makeba</a>) and others. </p>
<p>As influences mixed, new Afro-based music genres rose. Most celebrated of these was Afrobeat (<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerian-icon-fela-is-long-overdue-for-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-156870">Fela Kuti</a>). Afrobeat is a fusion of rich African polyrhythms and Afro-American forms like jazz and reggae. It was influenced by local political struggles and the US <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">civil rights</a> movement. </p>
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<p>But there was also Afro-reggae (<a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sonny-okosun-mn0000039654/biography">Sonny Okosun</a>), Afro-jùjú (<a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sir-shina-peters-mn0001204638">Shina Peters</a>) and Afro-pop (<a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/1312414-Theadora-Ifudu">Dora Ifudu</a>). There was increased participation of women in the industry (<a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/199004/nigeria-for-onyeka-onwenu-it-aint-over-till-the-slim-lady-sings/">Onyeka Onwenu</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/queen-salawa-abeni-mn0001010176">Salawa Abeni</a> and others).</p>
<p>Middle class income grew as a result of the first oil boom in Nigeria. Added to this was the rise of pentecostal Christianity among young people as well as the rise of sophisticated Lagos nightclubs. The likes of <a href="https://thenativemag.com/shuffle-ronnies-way-feel-rap-laid-foundation-nigeria-rap/">Ron Ekundayo</a> and <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2021/06/20/floods-of-tributes-for-benson-idonije-at-85/">Benson Idonije</a> would foreground the explosion of Nigerian deejays from the 2000s. In this period popular music styles were often adapted to gospel themes. </p>
<h2>2000–2022: Naija hip hop and Afrobeats</h2>
<p>With the start of a new century came a seismic shift from a diverse to a singular focus in Nigerian popular music. The new government of <a href="https://theconversation.com/obasanjo-from-a-nigerian-village-to-the-pinnacle-of-power-on-the-continent-179862">Olusegun Obasanjo</a> decided to pursue a local content policy. This meant that local music was foregrounded in media and broadcast. This would help form the “Naija hip hop” scene. </p>
<p>Naija hip hop is a profusion of US/global hip hop, Afrobeat, highlife and other Nigerian/African styles mediated through computer-aided technology. It boasts local rhythms, languages and dance styles. A remarkable feature of the Naija hip hop movement is its branching out into <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nigeria-to-the-world-afrobeats-is-having-a-global-moment-179910">Afrobeats</a> – an interlinked fusion of various Afro-based genres that has given Nigeria the greatest global fame and acceptance since its emergence as a modern nation-state in 1914.</p>
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<p>Just a few of the notable artists of this period include <a href="http://www.afrobios.com/-Plantashun+Boiz">Plantashun Boiz</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lagbaja-mn0000125482/biography">Lagbaja</a>, 2Face Idibia/<a href="https://www.instagram.com/official2baba/?hl=en">2Baba</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/2niteflavour/?hl=en">Flavour</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/asaofficial/?hl=en">Aṣa</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/davido-mn0003057150/biography">Davido</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-nigerian-music-star-wizkid-and-why-is-he-taking-over-the-world-179775">Wizkid</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/temsbaby/?hl=en">Tems</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/burnaboygram/">Burna Boy</a>.</p>
<p>I characterise this period as mononationalist because of the one-dimensional focus on a particular nationalist musical movement (Naija hip hop) that has dominated.</p>
<h2>Today</h2>
<p>The global COVID-19 pandemic’s shutdown of public life boosted online music structures and opportunities while helping to contain the unchecked powers of music pirates. This allowed many more talented and younger artists to emerge independently. But COVID-19 brought heavy economic losses to artists and music industry workers. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nigeria-to-the-world-afrobeats-is-having-a-global-moment-179910">From Nigeria to the world: Afrobeats is having a global moment</a>
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<p>In 2022, the Naija hip hop phenomenon, whose child is Afrobeats, is surging on with hit songs tearing competitively into the global soundscape. As Nigeria marks a century of popular music practices and experiences, it appears that the mononationalist era may last for a full generation (three decades) or more before another episode emerges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chijioke Ngobili does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigerian popular music - Afrobeats - is storming the world’s stages. But it’s just the latest stage in a vibrant century of recorded music in the country.Chijioke Ngobili, Lecturer in Music, University of NigeriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1837062022-05-26T15:01:29Z2022-05-26T15:01:29ZWho really owns the oil industry’s future stranded assets? If you own investment funds or expect a pension, it might be you<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465531/original/file-20220526-13-wdtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=170%2C0%2C5038%2C3368&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More countries are discouraging fossil fuel use, but the industry is still pumping.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-off-shore-oil-platform-off-the-coast-in-huntington-beach-news-photo/1217468918">Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When an oil company invests in an expensive new drilling project today, it’s taking a gamble. Even if the new well is a success, future government policies designed to slow climate change could make the project unprofitable or force it to shut down years earlier than planned.</p>
<p>When that happens, the well and the oil become what’s known as <a href="https://www.lloyds.com/strandedassets">stranded assets</a>. That might sound like the oil company’s problem, but the company isn’t the only one taking that risk.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01356-y">study published May 26, 2022</a>, in the journal Nature Climate Change, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9xh8Po0AAAAJ&hl=en">we</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1gais1MAAAAJ&hl=en">traced</a> the ownership of over 43,000 oil and gas assets to reveal who ultimately loses from misguided investments that become stranded.</p>
<p>It turns out, private individuals own over half the assets at risk, and ordinary people with pensions and savings that are invested in managed funds shoulder a surprisingly large part, which could exceed a quarter of all losses.</p>
<h2>More climate regulations are coming</h2>
<p>In 2015, almost every country worldwide signed the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/paris-agreement">Paris climate agreement</a>, committing to try to hold global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) compared to pre-industrial averages. Rising global temperatures were already contributing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/heat-waves-hit-the-poor-hardest-a-new-study-calculates-the-rising-impact-on-those-least-able-to-adapt-to-the-warming-climate-175224">deadly heat waves</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-and-wildfires-how-do-we-know-if-there-is-a-link-101304">worsening wildfires</a>. Studies showed the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">hazards would increase</a> as greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuel use, continue to rise.</p>
<p>It’s clear that meeting the Paris goals will <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050">require a global energy transition</a> away from fossil fuels. And many countries are developing climate policies designed to encourage that shift to cleaner energy. </p>
<p>But the oil industry is still launching new fossil fuel projects, which suggests that it doesn’t think it will be on the hook for future stranded assets. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called a <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/10/seven-new-oil-and-gas-projects-approved-since-ipcc-report-called-for-an-end-to-fossil-fuel">recent wave of new oil and gas projects</a> “<a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sgsm21228.doc.htm">moral and economic madness</a>.”</p>
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<img alt="Teenagers play in the water of the Caspian sea - one young man is flipping another, with several Soviet oil rigs behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C4387%2C2946&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465401/original/file-20220525-12-1uqbl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Much of the stranded asset risk falls on individuals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/teenagers-from-a-boxing-school-take-part-in-a-training-news-photo/478734696">Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty</a></span>
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<h2>How risk flows from oil field to small investor</h2>
<p>When an asset becomes stranded, the owner’s anticipated payoff won’t materialize. </p>
<p>For example, say an oil company buys drilling rights, does the exploration work and builds an offshore oil platform. Then it discovers that demand for its product has declined so much because of climate change policies that it would cost more to extract the oil than the oil could be sold for.</p>
<p>The oil company is owned by shareholders. Some of those shareholders are individuals. Others are companies that are in turn owned by their own shareholders. The lost profits are ultimately felt by those remote owners.</p>
<p>In the study, we modeled how demand for fossil fuels could decline if governments make good on their recent emissions reduction pledges and what that would mean for stranded assets. We found that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01356-y">$1.4 trillion in oil and gas assets</a> globally would be at risk of becoming stranded.</p>
<p>Stranded assets mean a wealth loss for the owners of the assets. We traced the losses from the oil and gas fields, through the extraction companies, on to those companies’ immediate shareholders and fundholders, and again their shareholders and fundholders if the immediate shareholders are companies, and all the way to people and governments that own stock in the companies in this chain of ownership. </p>
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<p>It’s a complex network.</p>
<p>On their way to ultimate owners, much of the loss passes through financial firms, including pension funds. Globally, pension funds that invest their members’ savings directly into other companies own <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/435a9384-8711-4b99-95a8-d55e962343c6">a sizable amount</a> of those future stranded assets. In addition, many <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/definedcontributionplan.asp">defined contribution pensions</a> have investments through fund managers, such as BlackRock or Vanguard, that invest on their behalf.</p>
<p>We estimate that total global losses hitting the financial sector – including through cross-ownership of one financial firm by another – from stranded assets in oil and gas production could be as high as $681 billion. Of this, about $371 billion would be held by fund managers, $146 billion by other financial firms and $164 billion could even affect bondholders, often pension funds, whose collateral would be diminished.</p>
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<p>U.S. owners have by far the largest exposure. Ultimately, we found that losses of up to $362 billion could be distributed through the financial system to U.S. investors.</p>
<p>Some of the assets and companies in an ownership chain are also overseas, which can make the exposure to risk for a fund owner even more difficult to track.</p>
<h2>Someone will get stuck with those assets</h2>
<p>Our estimates are based on a snapshot of recent global share ownership. At the moment, with <a href="https://money.com/gas-prices-near-record-high-2022/">oil</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europe-asia-gas-buyers-switching-long-term-supplies-beat-volatile-prices-2022-05-25/">gas</a> prices near record highs due to supply chain problems and the Russian war in Ukraine, oil and gas companies are paying splendid dividends. And in principle, every shareholder could sell off their holdings in the near future.</p>
<p>But that does not mean the risk disappears: Someone else buys that stock.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it’s like a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, someone will be left with the stranded asset. And since the most affluent investors have sophisticated investment teams, they may be best placed to get out in time, leaving less sophisticated investors and defined contribution pension plans to join the oil and gas field workers as losers, while the managers of the oil companies unfold their golden parachutes.</p>
<p>Alternatively, powerful investors could successfully lobby for compensation, as has happened repeatedly in the <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt%5Colr%5Chtm/98-R-0392.htm">U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-govt-adopts-coal-exit-fixes-hard-coal-compensation">Germany</a>. One argument would be that they couldn’t have anticipated the stricter climate laws when they invested, or they could point to governments asking companies to produce more in the short-term, as happened recently <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/09/granholm-calls-oil-companies-increase-production-00015802">in the U.S.</a> to substitute for Russian supplies.</p>
<p>However, divesting right away or hoping for compensation aren’t the only options. Investors – the owners of the company – can also pressure companies to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy generation or another choice with growth potential for the future.</p>
<p>Investors not only may have the financial risk, but also the related financial responsibility, and ethical choices may help preserve both the value of their investments and the climate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregor Semieniuk has previously received funding from the UK Research Councils and the ClimateWorks Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Holden has been funded through UK Research Councils, the European Commission and the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>A study found $1.4 trillion in oil and gas industry assets would be at risk if governments follow through on their pledges to deal with climate change.Gregor Semieniuk, Assistant Research Professor of Economics, UMass AmherstPhilip Holden, Senior Lecturer in Earth System Science, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821352022-05-05T18:00:24Z2022-05-05T18:00:24ZHow treaties protecting fossil fuel investors could jeopardize global efforts to save the climate – and cost countries billions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461418/original/file-20220504-16-lkr3zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5082%2C3520&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The threat of expensive payouts may already be having an effect.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/foot-sections-of-pipeline-which-will-carry-oil-from-the-news-photo/52832800?adppopup=true">Tom Stoddart/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fossil fuel companies have access to an obscure legal tool that could jeopardize worldwide efforts to protect the climate, and they’re starting to use it. The result could cost countries that press ahead with those efforts billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Over the past 50 years, countries have signed <a href="https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/iia-mapping">thousands of treaties</a> that protect foreign investors from government actions. These treaties are like contracts between national governments, meant to entice investors to bring in projects with the promise of local jobs and access to new technologies.</p>
<p>But now, as countries try to phase out fossil fuels to slow climate change, these agreements could leave the public facing overwhelming legal and financial risks.</p>
<p>The treaties allow investors to sue governments for compensation in a process called <a href="https://www.iisd.org/itn/en/2014/08/11/aron-broches-and-the-withdrawal-of-unilateral-offers-of-consent-to-investor-state-arbitration/">investor-state dispute settlement</a>, or ISDS. In short, investors could use ISDS clauses to demand compensation in response to government actions to limit fossil fuels, such as canceling pipelines and denying drilling permits. For example, TC Energy, a Canadian company, is currently seeking <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/tc-energy-seeks-nafta-damages-over-canceled-keystone-xl-project-2021-11-23/">more than US$15 billion</a> over U.S. President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.</p>
<p>In a study published May 5, 2022, in the journal Science, we estimate that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo4637">countries would face up to $340 billion</a> in legal and financial risks for canceling fossil fuel projects that are subject to treaties with ISDS clauses. </p>
<p>That’s more than countries worldwide put into climate adaptation and mitigation measures combined in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/tc-energy-seeks-nafta-damages-over-canceled-keystone-xl-project-2021-11-23/">fiscal year 2019</a>, and it doesn’t include the risks of phasing out coal investments or canceling fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. It means that money countries might otherwise spend to build a low-carbon future could instead go to the very industries that have <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-in-its-own-words-170642">knowingly been fueling climate change</a>, severely jeopardizing countries’ capacity to propel the green energy transition forward.</p>
<h2>Massive potential payouts</h2>
<p>Of the world’s 55,206 upstream oil and gas projects that are in the early stages of development, we identified 10,506 projects – 19% of the total – that were protected by 334 treaties providing access to ISDS. </p>
<p>That number could be much higher. We could only identify the headquarters of project owners, not the overall corporate structures of the investments, due to limited data. We also know that <a href="https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2022/02/climate-change-and-investorstate-dispute-settlement">law firms are advising clients in the industry</a> to structure investments to ensure access to ISDS, through processes such as using subsidiaries in countries with treaty protections. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Maps showing where these treaties are used." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461313/original/file-20220504-16-x863of.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo4637">K. Franklin/Science based on K. Tienhaara et al.</a></span>
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<p>Depending upon future oil and gas prices, we found that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo4637">total net present value of those projects</a> is expected to reach $60 billion to $234 billion. If countries cancel these protected projects, foreign investors could sue for financial compensation in line with these valuations. </p>
<p>Doing so would put several low- and middle-income countries at severe risk. Mozambique, Guyana and Venezuela could each face over $20 billion in potential losses from ISDS claims.</p>
<p>If countries also cancel oil and gas projects that are further along in development but are not yet producing, they face more risk. We found that 12% of those projects worldwide are protected by investment treaties, and their investors could sue for $32 billion to $106 billion. </p>
<p>Canceling approved projects <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo4637">could prove exceptionally risky</a> for countries like Kazakhstan, which could lose $6 billion to $18 billion, and Indonesia, with $3 billion to $4 billion at risk.</p>
<p>Canceling coal investments or fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, could lead to even more claims.</p>
<h2>Countries already feel regulatory chill</h2>
<p>There have been <a href="https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2022-01/investor%E2%80%93state-disputes-fossil-fuel-industry.pdf">at least 231 ISDS cases</a> involving fossil fuels so far. Just the threat of massive payouts to investors could cause many countries to delay climate mitigation policies, causing a so-called “regulatory chill.” </p>
<p>Both <a href="https://capitalmonitor.ai/institution/government/cop26-ambitions-at-risk-from-energy-charter-treaty-lawsuits/https:/capitalmonitor.ai/institution/government/cop26-ambitions-at-risk-from-energy-charter-treaty-lawsuits/">Denmark and New Zealand</a>, for example, seem to have designed their fossil fuel phaseout plans specifically to minimize their exposure to ISDS. <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/energy-charter-conference-a-ministerial-without-ministers/">Some</a> climate policy <a href="https://www.ibanet.org/Climate-crisis-Impact-of-Energy-Charter-Treaty-on-clean-energy-transition-raises-concern">experts</a> have suggested that Denmark may have chosen 2050 as the end date for oil and gas extraction to avoid disputes with existing exploration license holders.</p>
<p>New Zealand banned all new offshore oil exploration in 2018 but did not cancel any existing contracts. The climate minister acknowledged that a more aggressive plan <a href="https://capitalmonitor.ai/institution/government/cop26-ambitions-at-risk-from-energy-charter-treaty-lawsuits/">“would have run afoul of investor-state settlements.”</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2021.100118">France revised a draft law</a> banning fossil fuel extraction by 2040 and allowing the renewal of oil exploitation permits after the <a href="https://www.vermilionenergy.com/our-operations/europe/france.cfm">Canadian company Vermilion</a> threatened to launch an ISDS case.</p>
<h2>Securing the green energy transition</h2>
<p>While these findings are alarming, countries have options to avoid onerous legal and financial risks. </p>
<p>The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is <a href="https://www.oecd.org/investment/investment-policy/investment-treaties.htm">currently discussing proposals</a> on the future of investment treaties.</p>
<p>A straightforward approach would be for countries to terminate or withdraw from these treaties. Some officials have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12355">expressed concern</a> about unforeseen impacts of unilaterally terminating investment treaties, but other countries have already done so, <a href="https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/pgcw_fdi-inflows-from-bit-termination_finaldraft.pdf">with few or no real economic consequences</a>. </p>
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<p>For more complex trade agreements, countries can negotiate to remove ISDS provisions, as the United States and Canada <a href="https://www.iisd.org/articles/usmca-impact-north-american-trade">did when they replaced</a> the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.</p>
<p>Additional challenges stem from “sunset clauses” that bind countries for a decade or more after they have withdrawn from some treaties. Such is the case for Italy, which <a href="https://borderlex.net/2022/04/25/ect-negotiations-members-eye-june-deal-announcement/">withdrew from the Energy Charter Treaty</a> in 2016. It is <a href="https://icsid.worldbank.org/cases/case-database/case-detail?CaseNo=ARB/17/14">currently stuck</a> in an ongoing ISDS case initiated by the U.K. company Rockhopper over a ban on coastal oil drilling. </p>
<p>The Energy Charter Treaty, a special investment agreement covering the energy sector, emerged as the greatest single contributor to global ISDS risks in our dataset. Many European countries are <a href="https://borderlex.net/2022/04/25/ect-negotiations-members-eye-june-deal-announcement/">currently considering</a> whether to leave the treaty and how to avoid the same fate as Italy. If all country parties to a treaty can <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1153&context=sustainable_investment_staffpubs">agree together to withdraw</a>, they could <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/icsidreview/sit051">collectively sidestep</a> the sunset clause through mutual agreement. </p>
<h2>The global transition</h2>
<p>Combating climate change is not cheap. Actions <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/">by governments</a> and the private sector are <a href="https://www.iea.org/articles/the-cost-of-capital-in-clean-energy-transitions">both needed</a> to slow global warming and keep it <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">from fueling increasingly devastating disasters</a>.</p>
<p>In the end, the question is who will pay – and be paid – in the global energy transition. We believe that, at the very least, it would be counterproductive to divert critical public finance from essential mitigation and adaptation efforts to the pockets of fossil fuel industry investors whose products caused the problem in the first place.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Thrasher receives funding from Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyla Tienhaara receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program (Government of Canada). She provides pro bono advice for a number of non-profit organizations working on climate and investment issues. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blake Alexander Simmons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study adds up the potential legal and financial risk countries could face from hundreds of agreements, like those under the Energy Charter Treaty.Rachel Thrasher, Law Lecturer and Researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, Boston UniversityBlake Alexander Simmons, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State UniversityKyla Tienhaara, Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812832022-04-14T18:32:28Z2022-04-14T18:32:28ZJust Stop Oil: protests will be even more disruptive if they kick off panic buying<p>Protesters from the climate activist groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have blocked at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/11/no-10-condemns-guerrilla-tactics-of-just-stop-oil-blocking-fuel-deliveries">least 11</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-61065016">fuel depots</a> across England and disrupted supplies (though it’s always tough to quantify exactly how much disruption there has been).</p>
<p>Petrol stations also experienced delays back in <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/uk-fuel-crisis-09-28-21/index.html">September 2021</a>, partly due to a lack of drivers and resulting panic buying. These two events are caused by two completely different phenomenon on the extremes of supply and demand and go to show just how fragile the modern supply chain is, and how disruption can affect the day to day lives of millions.</p>
<p>Oil is a finite resource that can mostly only be produced at a fixed rate. Governments can and do stockpile reserves to balance seasonal demand spikes and unplanned disruptions such as extreme weather or conflict. However, stockpiling only really helps what we call the “upstream” supply chain, which takes oil from the wells to refineries. What is known as the “downstream” supply chain links the refineries to the pumps, and it is here that the UK’s shortages have occurred.</p>
<p>Petrol companies can only supply at a broadly linear rate, allowing for spikes (or falls) in demand or supply of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161893820300090">a few percent</a>. Shortages at the beginning of the 2021 event were within these limits. However, rumours of supply constraints (partly due to a lack of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/bp-restrict-uk-petrol-station-deliveries-due-driver-shortage-itv-2021-09-23/">truck drivers</a> to deliver the fuel) and recent memories of food shortages at the start of the pandemic, led to people panic buying. This created queues, which created more hype, leading to more people wanting to fill up before they thought the queues would get worse, and this led to genuine shortages – perhaps an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>
<p>The driver shortage hasn’t really gone away, yet between late 2021 and mid 2022, there were no more shortages. The queues at the pumps were almost entirely due to human behaviour. </p>
<h2>Why is it different now?</h2>
<p>This time round, the shortages are again in the downstream supply chain, but are caused by protesters physically <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/11/no-10-condemns-guerrilla-tactics-of-just-stop-oil-blocking-fuel-deliveries">blockading refineries</a>, preventing the tankers from replenishing filling stations. Refined petrol and diesel are still transported to fuel stations via lorries, so if you block the lorries leaving, the fuel won’t be delivered. </p>
<p>So the causes are very different, but the current protests may yet led to a similar demand-led shortages if panic buying ensues. </p>
<p>A better parallel might be the events of September 2000 when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/23/autumn-2000-fuel-shortages-uk-standstill-price-protest-panic-buying">fuel price protesters blocked refineries</a>, leading to fuel running out for a number of weeks. Blocking deliveries for even a few days will often cause up to two weeks shortages if they lead to panic buying – which leaves a situation where lower than normal filling station tanks need even more replenishing, and thus requiring higher than normal levels of deliveries to correct. The road fuel supply chain is like many modern industries that practise “<a href="https://www.cips.org/knowledge/procurement-topics-and-skills/operations-management/just-in-time/">just-in-time</a>” operations, meaning that very little stock is kept where the consumer buys them, and the system relies on constant replenishment. </p>
<p>Since fuel is delivered by humans, it is hard to catch up quicker than normal. People can only work at a set rate before needing breaks, and it takes time to train and deploy extra workers, it is something that is just not cost effective to do in order to deal with extraordinary circumstances.</p>
<h2>What can we do to prevent the problems?</h2>
<p>As shortages at the pumps can be caused by two entirely phenomena in the supply chain, preventing them requires two different approaches, both of which are essentially out of the control of supply chain planners. Excessive demand-based shortages can be easily prevented by not panic buying, though this is <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-you-really-need-more-petrol-or-toilet-paper-there-are-better-ways-to-take-control-in-a-crisis-168975">easier said than done</a> as it involves trying to influence mass consumer behaviour at short notice. </p>
<p>Supply-based shortages, such as the current Stop Oil blockades, can in theory be controlled more easily by governments. After all, this type of protest action is not legal and protesters can be moved on, even if by that point the disruption is often already done. </p>
<p>In recent trials of protesters from the campaign group Insulate Britain, a judge said that, even though the protesters had broken the law, he and large parts of society had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/13/insulate-britain-protesters-praised-by-judge-who-fined-them">sympathy for their environmental causes</a>. Ultimately the protesters have a point: we do need to stop using oil to power road vehicles, and move to <a href="https://theconversation.com/electric-cars-could-one-day-power-your-house-heres-how-to-make-it-happen-171430">battery electric vehicles</a>. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Stacey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fragile supply chains can handle protests better than massive extra demand.Tom Stacey, Senior Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788622022-03-15T12:16:22Z2022-03-15T12:16:22ZSmall oil producers like Ghana, Guyana and Suriname could gain as buyers shun Russian crude<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451928/original/file-20220314-118290-sywzv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C2485%2C1665&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman sells drinks on a street in Georgetown in Guyana, one of South America's poorest countries, March 1, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-sells-water-and-soda-in-a-street-stall-in-georgetown-news-photo/1204536568">Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/russia-us-trade-relations.html">U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/eu-phase-out-russian-gas-oil-coal-imports-leaders-draft-2022-03-07/">Europe</a> cut back purchases of Russian oil, and energy traders <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/investing/russia-oil-sanctions-ukraine/index.html">shun it for fear of sanctions</a>, the search is on for other sources. Attention has focused on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/politics/joe-biden-saudi-arabia-venezuela-iran-russia-oil/index.html">Iran and Venezuela</a>, both of which are led by governments that the U.S. sought until recently to isolate. But emerging and less-developed producers could also play roles. </p>
<p>Among the world’s <a href="https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/petroleum-and-other-liquids/annual-petroleum-and-other-liquids-production">many oil-producing countries</a>, a few are positioned to jump the list and become increasingly active. They include the West African nation of Ghana (No. 33), along with Guyana (No. 42) and Suriname (No. 69), two small adjoining countries on the north Atlantic coast of South America. All three nations have become oil producers within the past 12 years, working with large companies like <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/News/Newsroom/News-releases/2022/0105_ExxonMobil-makes-two-discoveries-offshore-Guyana">ExxonMobil</a>, <a href="https://www.tullowoil.com/our-operations/africa/ghana/">Tullow Ltd</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/suriname-state-oil-firm-chevron-sign-offshore-oil-output-sharing-contract-2021-10-13/">Chevron</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/business/energy-environment/suriname-oil-discovery.html">Apache, Total and Royal Dutch Shell</a>. </p>
<p>I study factors that influence <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennapher-lunde-seefeldt-455a52113/">levels of democracy and social justice within nations</a>, especially as they relate to natural resources and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12365">economic structures</a>. As I see it, these newer producers are in a unique position compared to other oil-exporting nations, such as Nigeria and Ecuador. </p>
<p>In too many cases, developing nations opening their economies to oil production have been expected to accept the terms companies demand, with little room for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/09/a-wealth-of-sorrow-why-nigerias-abundant-oil-reserves-are-really-a-curse">negotiation</a> and <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/kimerling.pdf">continued</a> <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2021/11/24/nigerias-petroleum-industry-act-addressing-old-problems-creating-new-ones/">exploitation of host communities</a>. In contrast, Guyana, Suriname and Ghana are better situated to obtain favorable terms. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qNUuIA1Pam8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Social scientists coined the term “resource curse” to describe countries that are rich in natural resources such as oil, but have poor economic growth or development. One challenge for these nations is negotiating equitable deals with foreign investors.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Striking better deals</h2>
<p>As world markets grapple with the current oil price shock, niche producers are in especially favorable positions to secure advantageous contracts and more favorable terms from international energy companies. For example, oil companies typically pay host countries royalties on their revenues that average <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/business/energy-environment/suriname-oil-discovery.html">about 16%</a>. To date, Guyana and Suriname have accepted fees of less than 6.5% in an effort to attract investors. Under current conditions, they may be able to ask for more during new contract negotiations. </p>
<p>Oil production started in Guyana in late 2019, and currently the country produces over <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/News/Newsroom/News-releases/2022/0211_ExxonMobil-starts-production-at-Guyanas-second-offshore-development">340,000 barrels per day</a>. Guyana learned from its first block contract with ExxonMobil to demand more “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2020/08/20/guyanas-new-government-makes-plans-for-more-demands-on-exxonmobil/">local content</a>” – a key condition in oil negotiations that refers to hiring local workers and using locally made goods and equipment. Natural resources minister Vickram Bharrat has called that agreement, made by a previous administration, “one of the worst ever between a government and an oil company,” and Guyanese officials say they <a href="https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2299461-guyana-seeks-bigger-take-from-new-oil-contracts">will seek more-favorable terms in future agreements</a>. </p>
<p>Suriname’s new offshore oil discoveries offer potential. Small operations are currently producing about <a href="https://oilnow.gy/featured/suriname-oil-discoveries-estimated-at-1-4-billion-barrels-rystad-energy/">20,000 barrels per day</a>, and major projects are <a href="https://www.worldoil.com/magazine/2021/may-2021/features/guyana-suriname-basin-rise-from-obscurity-to-super-potential">expected to start by 2025</a>. </p>
<p>Suriname is <a href="https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2021/12/23/suriname-does-continuous-reviews-of-companies-oil-spill-response-plans/">demanding increased insurance</a> from oil companies in the event of an oil spill, along with prepared emergency cleanup procedures. These processes are continually reviewed and criticized, keeping companies on their toes. </p>
<p>Ghana started oil development in 2007 and now produces about <a href="https://hawilti.com/uncategorized/ghana-bets-on-higher-oil-revenues-despite-production-decline-over-2022-2025/">163,000 barrels per day</a>. However, ExxonMobil pulled out of the country in 2021, reportedly to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/98380/exxons-exit-from-ghana-may-be-first-sign-of-majors-quitting-africa/">focus on higher-value projects elsewhere</a>, and depressed demand during the COVID-19 pandemic cut into Ghana’s oil exports. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men on an offshore oil platform in coveralls and helmets, smiling" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451909/original/file-20220314-19-1co98vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ghanaian President John Atta Mills turns a valve to symbolically open oil production in the Jubilee field off Ghana’s west coast, Dec. 15, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ghanaian-president-john-atta-mills-turns-the-valve-to-flag-news-photo/107606452">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now, Ghana’s national oil company, Ghana National Petroleum Corp., is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-18/ghana-s-gnpc-on-acquisition-drive-to-better-control-oil-assets">taking a larger role</a>, buying shares in oil fields from companies like Occidental Petroleum. Greater state involvement is raising uncertainty about how much access Ghana will offer to foreign oil companies. Some, including Tullow Oil and Aker Energy, are producing there now, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/09/tullow-oil-shares-ghana-stock-market-value">Tullow’s shares have plummeted</a> in recent years, and there has been speculation that it may leave Ghana.</p>
<h2>Managing oil income</h2>
<p>Nations and states that produce oil or other natural resources often put their royalties into <a href="https://www.swfinstitute.org/research/sovereign-wealth-fund">sovereign wealth funds</a> instead of simply adding them to general treasury funds. A sovereign wealth fund is essentially a rainy day pot that the government can use in times of economic stress to continue funding major priorities, such as infrastructure projects and social programs. </p>
<p>Some of these funds, notably in <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/norwegians-millionaires-norways-sovereign-wealth-fund/story?id=21488085">Norway</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181220-why-alaska-sends-each-resident-a-cheque-in-the-mail">Alaska</a>, have produced significant benefits for residents. However, some experts argue that they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102048">aren’t necessarily well suited for developing nations</a>.</p>
<p>According to this view, the success of these funds <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/17313">depends on many hard-to-control variables</a>, such as whether the country has a diversified economy, its level of corruption and global events like commodity price collapses. And managing the funds <a href="https://globalswf.com/news/png-s-struggle-to-establish-swf-illustrates-challenges-facing-resource-rich-least-developed-countries">requires significant technical skills</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1501996580370620418"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02646811.2017.1329120">Ghana</a> created an Oil Heritage Fund in 2011, and <a href="https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Guyana-Votes-To-Set-Up-Oil-Wealth-Fund.html">Guyana</a> and <a href="https://suriname-energy.com/en/article/top-three-things-suriname-must-learn-guyanas-oil-boom">Suriname</a> are in the process of doing so. All three may need assistance to manage these funds effectively and maximize benefits for their citizens.</p>
<h2>Transparency and peer support</h2>
<p>Recognizing that it can be challenging for developing countries to negotiate with major corporate investors, a number of nongovernmental organizations have become active in this sector. One that’s particularly relevant to oil production is the <a href="https://eiti.org/About">Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative</a>, which seeks to publicize information about extraction practices, contracts, taxing and spending processes, and more. This benefits the public by tracking where revenue goes and promoting accountability. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.newproducersgroup.online/what-we-do/">New Producers Group</a> works to help countries manage resources effectively through peer-to-peer relationships and knowledge exchange. Emerging producers can learn from other nations’ experiences and collaborate with other governments on issues that affect them all. For example, the organization has held several events recently, analyzing <a href="https://www.newproducersgroup.online/event/cop26-side-event-climate-change-and-new-petroleum-producing-countries/">what the global transition away from fossil fuels means for emerging oil producers</a>, and how these countries can manage the transition while working to end poverty.</p>
<p>As members of both organizations, Ghana, Guyana and Suriname have access to tools that many early producers did not. All three countries have participated in <a href="https://www.newproducersgroup.online/members-area/">multilateral meetings and exchanges</a> with peers and <a href="https://eiti.org/public-benefit">shared information</a> with local citizens. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CJyCPEEgdoo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Keeping the public informed helps to hold government officials and corporations accountable and promotes public involvement. Citizens and civil society watchdogs <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/in-depth-guyanas-oil-makes-the-case-for-publishing-public-contracts">criticized</a> ExxonMobil’s first contract in Guyana for not including citizen feedback and being created behind closed doors. </p>
<p>Public involvement and transparency also reduce the potential for corruption, a common problem in resource-rich nations. Transparency International’s <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021">Corruption Perceptions Index</a> measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in nations worldwide. On a scale with 100 as the worst score, Guyana and Suriname scored 39 and Ghana scored 43, so all three states have significant room for improvement. </p>
<p>As the world slowly transitions away from fossil fuels, emerging producers are acutely aware of the need to seize the moment for development’s sake, but also seek to meet climate change pledges. Guyana and Suriname may have an <a href="https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/30258/to-develop-oil-guyana-and-suriname-could-set-back-climate-goals">asset</a> in the fight against climate change: dense forests that can absorb large quantities of carbon, helping to offset emissions. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Guyana has unveiled a <a href="https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/LEA211119.pdf">Low Carbon Development Strategy for 2030</a> and has <a href="https://www.stabroeknews.com/2022/02/19/news/guyana/guyana-looking-to-market-at-least-8m-carbon-credits-by-july/">partnered with Norway to generate carbon credits</a> for protecting its forests. I see partnerships like these as ways to advance environmental goals alongside the social and economic development that these nations desperately need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennapher Lunde Seefeldt is affiliated with American Political Science Association. </span></em></p>Buyers are avoiding Russian oil in response to the war in Ukraine. Can smaller producers leverage this moment to strike favorable deals with big oil companies?Jennapher Lunde Seefeldt, Assistant Professor of Government and International Affairs, Augustana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1759832022-02-03T13:10:24Z2022-02-03T13:10:24ZLos Angeles’ long, troubled history with urban oil drilling is nearing an end after years of health concerns<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443965/original/file-20220202-13-lvg7ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C58%2C2860%2C1877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oil pumps can be found near homes across the Los Angeles area.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-oil-well-pumps-in-a-newly-constructed-neighborhood-near-news-photo/2043026">David McNew/Getty Image</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Los Angeles had oil wells pumping in its neighborhoods when Hollywood was in its infancy, and thousands of active wells still dot the city.</p>
<p>These wells can emit toxic chemicals such as benzene and other irritants into the air, often just feet from homes, schools and parks. But now, after nearly a decade of community organizing and studies demonstrating the adverse health impacts on people living nearby, Los Angeles’ long history with urban drilling is nearing an end.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-26/l-a-city-council-moves-to-phase-out-oil-and-gas-drilling">unanimous vote</a> on Jan. 26, 2022, the Los Angeles City Council took the first step toward phasing out all oil and gas extraction in the city by declaring oil extraction a nonconforming land use. That came on the heels of a unanimous vote by <a href="https://mitchell.lacounty.gov/board-of-supervisors-passes-landmark-motions-to-phase-out-oil-drilling/">Los Angeles County supervisors</a> to phase out oil extraction in unincorporated county areas. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=t4m6sjAAAAAJ&hl=en">environmental health</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bhavna-Shamasunder">researchers</a>, we study the impacts of oil drilling on surrounding communities. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">Our research</a> shows that <a href="http://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15010138">people living near these urban oil operations</a> suffer higher rates of asthma than average, as well as wheezing, eye irritation and sore throats. In some cases, the impact on residents’ lungs is worse than living beside a highway or being exposed to secondhand smoke every day. </p>
<h2>LA was once an oil town with forests of derricks</h2>
<p>Over a century ago, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3985379">first industry to boom</a> in Los Angeles was oil. </p>
<p>Oil was abundant and flowed close to the surface. In early 20th-century California, sparse laws governed mineral extraction, and rights to oil accrued to those who could pull it out of the ground first. This ushered in a period of rampant drilling, with wells and associated machinery crisscrossing the landscape. By the mid-1920s, Los Angeles was one of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3985379?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">largest oil-exporting regions</a> in the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A historic black-and-white photo shows a street with houses, old cars and dozens of oil derricks on the hill behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402241/original/file-20210523-102683-u0ildq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1924 photo shows the oil derricks on Signal Hill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_City_Views%20(1925%20+).html">Water and Power Museum Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old black-and-white photo of a roller coaster on a pier, with the city behind it and then a long row of oil derricks behind that on a ridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402245/original/file-20210523-23-dk3nal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The view across The Pike amusement park and downtown Long Beach, California, in 1940 shows a forest of oil derricks in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_City_Views%20(1925%20+).html">Water and Power Museum Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oil rigs were so pervasive across the region that the Los Angeles Times described them in 1930 as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas079">trees in a forest</a>.” Working-class communities were initially supportive of the industry because it promised jobs but later <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3985379">pushed back</a> as their neighborhoods witnessed explosions and oil spills, along with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-004-1159-0">longer-term damage to land, water and human health</a>.</p>
<p>Tensions over land use, extraction rights and subsequent drops in oil prices due to overproduction eventually resulted in curbs on drilling and a long-standing practice of oil companies’ voluntary “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas079">self-regulation</a>,” such as noise-reduction technologies. The industry began touting these voluntary approaches to deflect governmental regulation.</p>
<p>Increasingly, oil companies disguised their activities with approaches such as operating <a href="https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/hidden-oil-wells/">inside buildings, building tall walls</a> and <a href="https://lbbusinessjournal.com/thums-oil-islands-half-a-century-later-still-unique-still-iconic">designing islands off Long Beach</a> and other sites to blend in with the landscape. Oil drilling was hidden in plain sight. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A silhouetted student with a backpack walks past an oil derrick covered with drawings of flowers outside a school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403472/original/file-20210530-17-ozo882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beverly Hills High School earned money from an oil well, hidden behind walls covered with flower drawings, that operated until 2017 but raised health concerns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/decorative-flowery-exterior-masks-an-oil-rig-along-olympic-news-photo/566019401">Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today there are over 20,000 active, idle or abandoned wells spread across a county of 10 million people. About <a href="https://news.usc.edu/184929/urban-oil-wells-drilling-lung-health-los-angeles-usc-research/">one-third of residents</a> live less than a mile from an active well site, <a href="https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/wellfinder/#openModal/-118.23225/33.87983/12">some right next door</a>.</p>
<p>Since the 2000s, the advance of extractive technologies to access harder-to-reach deposits has led to a resurgence of oil extraction activities. As extraction in some neighborhoods has ramped up, people living in South Los Angeles and other neighborhoods in oil fields have noticed frequent <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-sep-21-la-me-0922-oil-20130922-story.html">odors, nosebleeds and headaches</a>. </p>
<h2>Closer to urban oil drilling, poorer lung function</h2>
<p>The city of Los Angeles has no buffers or setbacks between oil extraction and homes, and approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">75% of active oil or gas wells are located within 500 meters</a> (1,640 feet) of “sensitive land uses,” such as homes, schools, child care facilities, parks or senior residential facilities. </p>
<p>Despite over a century of oil drilling in Los Angeles, until recently there was limited research into the health impacts. Working with <a href="https://envhealthcenters.usc.edu/2021/04/harnessing-the-expertise-of-community-health-workers-for-environmental-health-research.html">community health workers</a> and community-based organizations helped us gauge the impact oil wells are having on residents, particularly on its historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Oil drilling in Los Angeles.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first step was a door-to-door survey of 813 neighbors from 203 households near wells in Las Cienegas oil field, just south and west of downtown. We found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15010138">asthma</a> was significantly more common among people living near South Los Angeles oil wells than among residents of <a href="https://ask.chis.ucla.edu">Los Angeles County as a whole</a>. Nearly half the people we spoke with, 45%, didn’t know oil wells were operating nearby, and 63% didn’t know how to contact local regulatory authorities to report odors or environmental hazards. </p>
<p>Next, we measured lung function of 747 long-term residents, ages 10 to 85, living near two drilling sites. Poor lung capacity, measured as the amount of air a person can exhale after taking a deep breath, and lung strength, how strongly the person can exhale, and are both predictors of health problems including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-012-9750-2">respiratory disease, death from cardiovascular problems</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/thorax.58.5.388">early death in general</a>.</p>
<p>We found that the closer someone lived to an active or recently idle well site, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111088">the poorer that person’s lung function</a>, even after adjusting for such other risk factors as smoking, asthma and living near a freeway. This research demonstrates a significant relationship between living near oil wells and worsened lung health.</p>
<p>People living up to 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) downwind of a well site showed lower lung function on average than those living farther away and upwind. The effect on their lungs’ capacity and strength was similar to impacts of living near a freeway or, for women, being exposed to secondhand smoke.</p>
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<p>Using a community monitoring network in South Los Angeles, we were able to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117519">distinguish oil-related pollution</a> in neighborhoods near wells. We found short-term spikes of air pollutants and methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at monitors <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146194">less than 500 meters, about one-third of a mile, from oil sites</a>.</p>
<p>When oil production at a site <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D1EM00048A">stopped</a>, we observed significant reductions in such toxins as benzene, toluene and n-hexane in the air in adjacent neighborhoods. These <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp123-p.pdf">chemicals</a> are known irritants, carcinogens and reproductive toxins. They are also associated with dizziness, headaches, fatigue, tremors and respiratory system irritation, including difficulty breathing and, at higher levels, impaired lung function. </p>
<h2>Vulnerable communities at risk</h2>
<p>Many of the dozens of active oil wells in South Los Angeles are in historically Black and Hispanic communities that have been marginalized for decades. These neighborhoods are already considered among the <a href="https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30">most highly polluted, with the most vulnerable residents</a> in the state.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing active well sites." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403473/original/file-20210530-15-1w5wltk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A state app called Well Finder locates active oil wells, including in Los Angeles County.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/wellfinder/#openModal/-118.00909/33.92186/12">State of California</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In its landmark vote in January, the City Council moved to draft an ordinance that would ban all new oil wells, and it ordered a study to determine how to phase out and decommission existing wells over the next five years. </p>
<p>The state, meanwhile, has proposed a <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/10/21/california-moves-to-prevent-new-oil-drilling-near-communities-expand-health-protections-2/">3,200-foot setback rule for new wells</a>, but this has not yet gone into effect and does little to address health concerns for residents who live near existing wells. Gov. Gavin Newsom has also <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/23/governor-newsom-takes-action-to-phase-out-oil-extraction-in-california/">proposed to phase out oil extraction</a>, but the proposal would allow oil wells to continue operating until 2045. </p>
<p>Our research shows why a variety of policies, including buffers, phaseouts and emissions controls in existing wells will need to be considered to protect public health and accelerate the transition to cleaner energy sources.</p>
<p><em>This updates an <a href="https://theconversation.com/urban-oil-wells-linked-to-asthma-and-other-health-problems-in-los-angeles-160162">article</a> originally published June 2, 2021.</em> </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.\</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Johnston works at the University of Southern California. This research was supported in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bhavna Shamasunder works at Occidental College. This research was supported in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the 11th Hour Project. </span></em></p>Photos from the early 1900s show LA’s forests of oil derricks. Hundreds of wells are still pumping, and research shows how people living nearby are struggling with breathing problems.Jill Johnston, Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern CaliforniaBhavna Shamasunder, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1717912021-11-23T07:35:46Z2021-11-23T07:35:46ZWhy the oil industry’s pivot to carbon capture and storage – while it keeps on drilling – isn’t a climate change solution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432745/original/file-20211118-13-17icw4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C46%2C5184%2C3409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most carbon dioxide captured in the U.S. today is used to extract more oil.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pump-jacks-at-the-belridge-oil-field-and-hydraulic-fracking-news-photo/566447215">Citizens of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.04.014">decades of sowing doubt</a> about climate change and its causes, the fossil fuel industry is now shifting to a new strategy: presenting itself as the source of solutions. This repositioning includes rebranding itself as a “carbon management industry.” </p>
<p>This strategic pivot was <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/hundreds-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-flooding-cop26-climate-talks/">on display</a> at the Glasgow climate summit and at a <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/fueling-the-climate-crisis-exposing-big-oil-s-disinformation-campaign-to">Congressional hearing</a> in October 2021, where CEOs of four major oil companies talked about a “lower-carbon future.” That future, in their view, would be powered by the fuels they supply and technologies they could deploy to remove the planet-warming carbon dioxide their products emit – provided they get sufficient government support. </p>
<p>That support may be coming. The Department of Energy recently added “carbon management” <a href="https://www.energy.gov/fecm/articles/our-new-name-also-new-vision">to the name</a> of its Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management and is <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/cash-infused-carbon-capture-office-expands-does-climate-mission">expanding its funding for carbon capture and storage</a>. </p>
<p>But how effective are these solutions, and what are their consequences?</p>
<p>Coming from <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/gdae/researchers/">backgrounds in economics, ecology</a> <a href="https://capitalismstudies.org/research/public-economy/">and public policy</a>, we have spent several years <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s41247-020-00080-5.pdf">focusing on carbon drawdown</a>. We have watched mechanical carbon capture methods struggle to demonstrate success, despite U.S. government investments of over <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44902.pdf">US$7 billion in direct spending</a> and at least a <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/04/30/treasury-ig-a-decade-of-carbon-capture-tax-credits-were-faulty/">billion more in tax credits</a>. Meanwhile, proven biological solutions with multiple benefits have received far less attention.</p>
<h2>CCS’s troubled track record</h2>
<p>Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, aims to capture carbon dioxide as it emerges from smokestacks either at power plants or from industrial sources. So far, CCS at U.S. power plants has been a failure.</p>
<p>Seven large-scale CCS projects have been attempted at U.S. power plants, each with hundreds of millions of dollars of government subsidies, but these projects were either canceled before they reached commercial operation or <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44902.pdf">were shuttered</a> after they started due to <a href="https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CCS-Tech-and-Costs.pdf">financial</a> or mechanical troubles. There is only one commercial-scale CCS power plant operation in the world, <a href="https://www.power-technology.com/projects/sask-power-boundary-dam/">in Canada</a>, and its captured carbon dioxide <a href="https://dualchallenge.npc.org/">is used to extract more oil from wells</a> – a process called “<a href="https://www.netl.doe.gov/sites/default/files/netl-file/co2_eor_primer.pdf">enhanced oil recovery</a>.”</p>
<p>In industrial facilities, all but one of the <a href="https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-Global-Status-of-CCS-Report_Global_CCS_Institute.pdf">dozen CCS projects in the U.S</a> uses the captured carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.</p>
<p>This expensive oil extraction technique has been described as “<a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/storing-co2-through-enhanced-oil-recovery">climate mitigation</a>” because the oil companies are now using carbon dioxide. But a modeling study of the full life cycle of this process at coal-fired power plants found it <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es902006h">puts 3.7 to 4.7 times as much carbon dioxide into the air as it removes</a>. </p>
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<h2>The problem with pulling carbon from the air</h2>
<p>Another method would directly remove carbon dioxide from the air. Oil companies like <a href="https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/news-media/latest-news/oxy-and-carbon-engineering-partner-to-combine-direct-air-capture-and-enhanced-oil-recovery-storage/">Occidental Petroleum</a> and <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/News/Newsroom/News-releases/2019/0627_ExxonMobil-and-Global-Thermostat-to-advance-breakthrough-atmospheric--carbon-capture-technology">ExxonMobil</a> are seeking government subsidies to develop and deploy such “direct air capture” systems. However, one widely recognized problem with these systems is their immense energy requirements, particularly if operating at a climate-significant scale, meaning removing at least 1 gigaton – 1 billion tons – of carbon dioxide per year. </p>
<p>That’s about 3% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions. The U.S. <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259/negative-emissions-technologies-and-reliable-sequestration-a-research-agenda">National Academies of Sciences</a> projects a need to remove 10 gigatons per year by 2050, and 20 gigatons per year by century’s end if decarbonization efforts fall short.</p>
<p>The only type of direct air capture system in relatively large-scale development right now must be powered by a <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259/negative-emissions-technologies-and-reliable-sequestration-a-research-agenda">fossil fuel</a> to attain the extremely high heat for the thermal process. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259/negative-emissions-technologies-and-reliable-sequestration-a-research-agenda">National Academies of Sciences</a> study of direct air capture’s energy use indicates that to capture 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide per year, this type of direct air capture system could require up to 3,889 terawatt-hours of energy – almost as much as the total electricity <a href="https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/">generated in the U.S. in 2020</a>. The largest direct air capture plant being developed in the U.S. right now uses this system, and <a href="https://www.naturalgasintel.com/oxy-taking-contrarian-approach-to-net-zero-emissions-by-developing-oil-resources-reusing-co2/">the captured carbon dioxide will be used for oil recovery</a>.</p>
<p>Another direct air capture system, employing a solid sorbent, uses somewhat less energy, but companies have struggled to scale it up beyond pilots. There are ongoing efforts to develop more efficient and effective direct air capture technologies, but some scientists are skeptical about its potential. One study describes enormous material and energy demands of direct air capture that the authors say make it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17203-7">“unrealistic.”</a> Another shows that spending the same amount of money on clean energy to replace fossil fuels is <a href="https://research.american.edu/carbonremoval/2019/11/13/jacobson-mark-2019-why-carbon-capture-and-direct-air-capture-cause-more-damage-than-good-to-climate-and-health/">more effective at reducing emissions, air pollution and other costs</a>. </p>
<h2>The cost of scaling up</h2>
<p>A 2021 study <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20437-0">envisions spending $1 trillion a year</a> to scale up direct air capture to a meaningful level. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-politics-breakingviews/breakingviews-review-bill-gates-engineers-climate-risk-clarity-idUSKBN2AJ1I4">Bill Gates</a>, who is backing a direct air capture company called Carbon Engineering, estimated that operating at climate-significant scale would cost $5.1 trillion every year. Much of the cost would be borne by governments because there is no “customer” for burying waste underground. </p>
<p>As lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere consider devoting billions more dollars to carbon capture, they need to consider the consequences.</p>
<p>The captured carbon dioxide must be transported somewhere for use or storage. A 2020 study from Princeton estimated that <a href="https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/img/Princeton_NZA_Interim_Report_15_Dec_2020_FINAL.pdf">66,000 miles of carbon dioxide pipelines</a> would have to be built by 2050 to begin to approach 1 gigaton per year of transport and burial.</p>
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<p>The issues with burying highly pressurized CO2 underground will be analogous to the problems that have faced nuclear waste siting, but at enormously larger quantities. Transportation, injection and storage of carbon dioxide bring health and environmental hazards, such as the risk of <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gassing-satartia-mississippi-co2-pipeline_n_60ddea9fe4b0ddef8b0ddc8f">pipeline ruptures</a>, <a href="https://eesa.lbl.gov/projects/potential-impacts-of-co2-leakage-on-groundwater-quality/">groundwater contamination</a> and the release of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcou.2018.11.002">toxins</a>, all of which particularly threaten the disadvantaged communities historically most victimized by pollution. </p>
<p>Bringing direct air capture to a scale that would have climate-significant impact would mean diverting taxpayer funding, private investment, technological innovation, scientists’ attention, public support and difficult-to-muster political action away from the essential work of transitioning to non-carbon energy sources. </p>
<h2>A proven method: trees, plants and soil</h2>
<p>Rather than placing what we consider to be risky bets on expensive mechanical methods that have a troubled track record and require decades of development, there are ways to sequester carbon that build upon the system we already know works: biological sequestration.</p>
<p>[<em>Science, politics, religion or just plain interesting articles:</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-checkoutweekly">Check out The Conversation’s weekly newsletters</a>.]</p>
<p>Trees in the U.S. already sequester <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-02/documents/us-ghg-inventory-2021-chapter-6-land-use-land-use-change-and-forestry.pdf">almost a billion tons</a> of carbon dioxide per year. Improved management of existing forests and urban trees, without using any additional land, <a href="https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/img/NZA%20Annex%20P%20-%20Forest%20carbon%20sink.pdf">could increase this by 70%</a>. With the addition of reforesting nearly 50 million acres, an area about the size of Nebraska, the U.S. could sequester <a href="https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/img/NZA%20Annex%20P%20-%20Forest%20carbon%20sink.pdf">nearly 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year</a>. That would equal about 40% of the country’s annual emissions. Restoring <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2017.06.037">wetlands</a> and <a href="https://www.fao.org/3/i1399e/i1399e.pdf">grasslands</a> and <a href="https://functionalfertiliser.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Lal-article-jswc.2020.0620A.full_.pdf">better agricultural practices</a> could sequester even more.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Looking up toward the crowns of giant sequoia trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432455/original/file-20211117-21-miyapl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Storing carbon in trees is less expensive per ton than current mechanical solutions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/sequoia-forest-royalty-free-image/502687891">Lisa-Blue via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Per ton of carbon dioxide sequestered, biological sequestration <a href="https://www.climateadvisers.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Creating-Negative-Emissions_Climate-Advisers_June-2018-copy.pdf">costs about one-tenth as much</a> as current mechanical methods. And it offers valuable side-benefits by reducing soil erosion and air pollution, and urban heat; increasing water security, biodiversity and energy conservation; and improving watershed protection, human nutrition and health.</p>
<p>To be clear, no carbon removal approach – neither mechanical nor biological – will solve the climate crisis without an immediate transition away from fossil fuels. But we believe that relying on the fossil fuel industry for “carbon management” will only further delay that transition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>June Sekera receives funding from Rockefeller Brothers Fund</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neva Goodwin is a co-founder and member of the Steering Committee of the EcoHealth Network.</span></em></p>Most carbon dioxide captured in the U.S. today is used to extract more oil. Two scholars point to another way: biological sequestration.June Sekera, Senior Research Fellow, Visiting Scholar, The New SchoolNeva Goodwin, Co-Director, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706422021-10-28T06:39:16Z2021-10-28T06:39:16ZWhat Big Oil knew about climate change, in its own words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428991/original/file-20211028-25-frti3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5178%2C3426&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The oil industry was aware of the risks of climate change decades ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/oil-refinery-owned-by-exxon-mobil-is-the-second-largest-in-news-photo/1225711980?adppopup=true">Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/lo-que-las-grandes-petroleras-sabian-sobre-el-cambio-climatico-en-sus-propias-palabras-181588">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Four years ago, I traveled around America, visiting historical archives. I was looking for documents that might reveal the hidden history of climate change – and in particular, when the major coal, oil and gas companies became aware of the problem, and what they knew about it.</p>
<p>I pored over boxes of papers, thousands of pages. I began to recognize typewriter fonts from the 1960s and ‘70s and marveled at the legibility of past penmanship, and got used to squinting when it wasn’t so clear. </p>
<p>What those papers revealed is now changing our understanding of how climate change became a crisis. The industry’s own words, as my <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0349-9">research found</a>, show companies knew about the risk long before most of the rest of the world.</p>
<h2>Surprising discoveries</h2>
<p>At an old gunpowder factory in Delaware – now a museum and archive – I found a transcript of a petroleum conference from 1959 called the <a href="https://archive.org/details/energymansymposi0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up">“Energy and Man” symposium</a>, held at Columbia University in New York. As I flipped through, I saw a speech from a famous scientist, <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/edward-teller">Edward Teller</a> (who helped invent the hydrogen bomb), warning the industry executives and others assembled of global warming.</p>
<p>“Whenever you burn conventional fuel,” Teller <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming">explained</a>, “you create carbon dioxide. … Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.” If the world kept using fossil fuels, the ice caps would begin to melt, raising sea levels. Eventually, “all the coastal cities would be covered,” he warned.</p>
<p>1959 was before the moon landing, before the Beatles’ first single, before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, before the first modern aluminum can was ever made. It was decades before I was born. What else was out there?</p>
<p>In Wyoming, I found another speech at the university archives in Laramie – this one from 1965, and from an oil executive himself. That year, at the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, the main organization for the U.S. oil industry, the group’s president, Frank Ikard, mentioning a report called “<a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/climate-change-evidence/presidents-report-atmospher-carbon-dioxide/">Restoring the Quality of Our Environment</a>” that had been published just a few days before by President Lyndon Johnson’s team of scientific advisers.</p>
<p>“The substance of the report,” Ikard <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0349-9">told the industry audience</a>, “is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequences of pollution, but time is running out.” He continued that “One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate.”</p>
<p>Ikard noted that the report had found that a “nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Traffic lights up the evening on a Boston bridge" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428930/original/file-20211027-25-i5aazh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Transportation is now the leading source of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., followed by electricity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/evening-rush-hour-traffic-heads-north-and-south-over-the-news-photo/1187429915?adppopup=true">David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I reviewed my findings back in California, I realized that before San Francisco’s Summer of Love, before Woodstock, the peak of the '60s counterculture and all that stuff that seemed ancient history to me, the heads of the oil industry had been privately informed by their own leaders that their products would eventually alter the climate of the entire planet, with dangerous consequences.</p>
<h2>Secret research revealed the risks ahead</h2>
<p>While I traveled the country, other researchers were hard at work too. And the documents they found were in some ways even more shocking.</p>
<p>By the late 1970s, the American Petroleum Institute had formed a secret committee called the “<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122015/exxon-mobil-oil-industry-peers-knew-about-climate-change-dangers-1970s-american-petroleum-institute-api-shell-chevron-texaco/">CO2 and Climate Task Force</a>,” which included representatives of many of the major oil companies, to privately monitor and discuss the latest developments in climate science.</p>
<p>In 1980, the task force invited a scientist from Stanford University, John Laurmann, to brief them on the state of climate science. Today, we have a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3483045-AQ-9-Task-Force-Meeting-1980.html">copy of Laurmann’s presentation</a>, which warned that if fossil fuels continued to be used, global warming would be “barely noticeable” by 2005, but by the 2060s would have “globally catastrophic effects.” That same year, the American Petroleum Institute called on governments to triple coal production worldwide, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2020.1863703">insisting there would be no negative consequences</a> despite what it knew internally.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428682/original/file-20211027-21-1a8q46y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A slide from John Laurmann’s presentation to the American Petroleum Institute’s climate change task force in 1980, warning of globally catastrophic effects from continued fossil fuel use.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Exxon had a secretive research program too. In 1981, one of its managers, Roger Cohen, sent an <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1981-exxon-memo-on-possible-emission-consequences-of-fossil-fuel-consumption/">internal memo</a> observing that the company’s long-term business plans could “produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population).” </p>
<p>The next year, Exxon completed a comprehensive, 40-page <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-management-about-co2-greenhouse-effect/">internal report</a> on climate change, which predicted almost exactly the amount of global warming we’ve seen, as well as sea level rise, drought and more. According to the front page of the report, it was “given wide circulation to Exxon management” but was “not to be distributed externally.”</p>
<p>And Exxon did keep it secret: We know of the report’s existence only because <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLIRQoJ1i4c">investigative journalists</a> at Inside Climate News <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models/">uncovered</a> it in 2015.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428977/original/file-20211028-15-15dr7q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A figure from Exxon’s internal climate change report from 1982, predicting how much carbon dioxide would build up from fossil fuels and how much global warming that would cause through the 21st century unless action was taken. Exxon’s projection has been remarkably accurate.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other oil companies knew the effects their products were having on the planet too. In 1986, the Dutch oil company Shell finished an <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1988-shell-report-greenhouse/">internal report</a> nearly 100 pages long, predicting that global warming from fossil fuels would cause changes that would be “the greatest in recorded history,” including “destructive floods,” abandonment of entire countries and even forced migration around the world. That report was stamped “CONFIDENTIAL” and only <a href="https://climateinvestigations.org/shell-oil-climate-documents-revealed/">brought to light</a> in 2018 by Jelmer Mommers, a Dutch journalist. </p>
<p>In October 2021, I and two French colleagues published another study showing through company documents and interviews how the Paris-based oil major <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021001655">Total was also aware</a> of global warming’s catastrophic potential as early as the 1970s. Despite this awareness, we found that Total then worked with Exxon to spread doubt about climate change.</p>
<h2>Big Oil’s PR pivot</h2>
<p>These companies had a choice. </p>
<p>Back in 1979, <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1979-exxon-memo-on-potential-impact-of-fossil-fuel-combustion/">Exxon had privately studied options</a> for avoiding global warming. It found that with immediate action, if the industry moved away from fossil fuels and instead focused on renewable energy, fossil fuel pollution could start to decline in the 1990s and a major climate crisis could be avoided.</p>
<p>But the industry didn’t pursue that path. Instead, colleagues and I recently found that in the late 1980s, Exxon and other <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021001655">oil companies coordinated a global effort</a> to dispute climate science, block fossil fuel controls and keep their products flowing. </p>
<p>We know about it through internal documents and the words of industry insiders, who are now beginning to share what they saw with the public. We also know that in 1989, the fossil fuel industry created something called the <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1989-membership/">Global Climate Coalition</a> – but it wasn’t an environmental group like the name suggests; instead, it <a href="https://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1997-anti-kyoto-ads/">worked to sow doubt</a> about climate change and lobbied lawmakers to block clean energy legislation and climate treaties throughout the 1990s. </p>
<p>For example, in 1997, the Global Climate Coalition’s chairman, William O'Keefe, who was also an executive vice president for the American Petroleum Institute, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636">wrote</a> in the Washington Post that “Climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth,” contradicting <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html">what the industry had known for decades</a>. The fossil fuel industry also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/10/how-fossil-fuel-industry-got-media-think-climate-change-was-debatable/">funded think tanks</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636">biased studies</a> that helped slow progress to a crawl.</p>
<p><iframe id="sk55V" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/sk55V/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Today, most oil companies shy away from denying climate science outright, but they continue to <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/06/30/exxon-climate-change-undercover/">fight fossil fuel controls</a> and promote themselves as clean energy leaders even though they <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9421ea96-01e1-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3">still put the vast majority</a> of their investments into fossil fuels. </p>
<p>A Congressional subcommittee on Oct. 28, 2021, <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/fueling-the-climate-crisis-exposing-big-oil-s-disinformation-campaign-to">questioned executives</a> from Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute about industry efforts to downplay the role of fossil fuels in climate change. Exxon CEO Darren Woods told lawmakers that his company’s public statements “are and have always been truthful” and that the company “does not spread disinformation regarding climate change.”</p>
<p>As I write this, climate legislation is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/17/climate/manchin-west-virginia-flooding.html">again being blocked</a> in Congress by a lawmaker with <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/a-closer-look-at-joe-manchins-ties-to-the-fossil-fuel-industy/">close ties to the fossil fuel industry</a>. </p>
<p>People around the world, meanwhile, are experiencing the effects of global warming: <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/rainfall/">weird weather</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-muting-fall-colors-but-its-just-the-latest-way-that-humans-have-altered-us-forests-170069">shifting seasons</a>, <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/heatwave/">extreme heat waves</a> and even <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-fires-are-burning-higher-in-the-mountains-and-at-unprecedented-rates-as-the-climate-warms-167706">wildfires</a> like they’ve never seen before.</p>
<p>Will the world experience the global catastrophe that the oil companies predicted years before I was born? That depends on what we do now, with our slice of history.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated Oct. 28, 2021, with details from a Congressional hearing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Franta has served as a consulting expert for climate change lawsuits in the US and internationally. His work has been supported by the Stanford University Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, the Climate Social Science Network, and the Center for Climate Integrity.</span></em></p>Transcripts and internal documents show how the industry shifted from leading research into fossil fuels’ effect on the climate to sowing doubt about science.Benjamin Franta, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1605532021-06-01T15:10:18Z2021-06-01T15:10:18ZHow illegal fishing harms Nigeria and what to do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403578/original/file-20210531-15-3lacp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Illegal fishing increases food and economic insecurities in Nigeria. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fishermen-display-their-catch-at-the-revived-argungu-news-photo/1207148780?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like most countries in West Africa, Nigeria’s coastal waters contain diverse species of fish, which <a href="https://fish.cgiar.org/publications/fish-food-systems-nigeria-review-0">contribute to the food and economic security of its people</a>. </p>
<p>Small-scale fishing operations contribute <a href="http://www.fao.org/fishery/facp/NGA/en">80% of locally produced fish</a> and <a href="https://juniperpublishers.com/ofoaj/OFOAJ.MS.ID.555677.php#:%7E:text=Artisanal%20fishing%20includes%2090%25%20of,for%20their%20livelihood%20%5B14%5D">support</a> the livelihoods of 24 million Nigerians. <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-a-mainstay-of-fishing-in-west-africa-but-they-get-a-raw-deal-159283">Seventy three percent</a> of those involved in fisheries in Nigeria are women. </p>
<p>The overall GDP contribution from fishing – small scale and industrial – was <a href="https://nigerianstat.gov.ng/download/1229">0.84% in 2019 and 1.09% in 2020</a>. </p>
<p>The fisheries sector is therefore a route to socioeconomic development in Nigeria. But it also faces threats. </p>
<p>One of these is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20414005.2018.1562287?journalCode=rtlt20">environmental pollution</a>, primarily from the oil industry. Pollution degrades the maritime environment, destroys fish stocks and reduces the catch. </p>
<p>Another threat is illegal fishing, as our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392206.2020.1724432?journalCode=uafs20&#.XljN4Cgt3I0">previous research </a> has found. Our current <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/geography-sustainable-development/people/imoy1">research</a> continues to explore how women, in particular, are affected by and responding to these threats.</p>
<p>The first step is to understand the scale and complexity of illegal fishing and associated crime, and why it is happening.</p>
<h2>Scale and costs</h2>
<p>Recently, the Nigerian House of Representatives <a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/nigeria-loses-70m-to-illegal-fishing/">noted</a> that the country loses $70 million each year to illegal fishing. This includes loss of licence fees, revenue from taxation and the value that could have been accrued from legitimate fishing by local vessels.</p>
<p>Other sources estimate the cost of illegal fishing in Nigeria as much higher, citing anywhere between <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2019/09/16/report-nigeria-loses-600m-annually-to-illegal-fishing/">$600 million</a> and <a href="https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2012/06/2012612123210113333.html">$800 million</a> each year. </p>
<p>The variation in these figures reveals the difficulties in calculating the costs of clandestine activity. It’s also a result of budgetary neglect of the Nigerian Federal Fisheries Department. The department lacks the capacity to monitor, survey and control vessels operating in Nigeria.</p>
<p>Vessels from <a href="https://chinadialogueocean.net/8338-nigeria-fishers-criminals-imports-climate-change/">China, the European Union</a>, and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/faf.12436">Belize</a> are notable for illegally exploiting Nigerian waters. </p>
<p>Despite varying estimates, all sources agree that the economic losses caused by illegal fishing in Nigeria are high. But the figures alone paint a superficial picture of the true costs of illegal fishing. Illegal fishing does not occur in isolation. </p>
<h2>Fisheries crime</h2>
<p>Fisheries crime denotes a vast and diverse <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2913-5">category</a> of illegality and criminality that aids or accompanies illegal fishing. Such crimes can include corruption, customs fraud, human and drugs trafficking and piracy. Illegal fishing and fisheries crime also threaten <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/we-have-the-tools-to-tackle-illegal-fishing-lets-use-them">human rights</a>. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392206.2020.1724432?journalCode=uafs20&#.XljN4Cgt3I0">previous research </a> found that illegal fishing was undermining people’s livelihoods. The lack of government support to address illegal fishing and protect livelihoods within fishing communities further pushes people into poverty. This makes them vulnerable to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392206.2020.1724432?journalCode=uafs20&#.XljN4Cgt3I0">criminal networks</a>. </p>
<p>Fisherfolks may end up <a href="https://www.maritime-executive.com/blog/countering-gulf-of-guinea-piracy-towards-2025">participating in</a>, and being victimised by, fisheries crime as a result. This is <a href="https://www.icc-ccs.org/reports/2020_Annual_Piracy_Report.pdf">evidenced</a> in increasing criminality through rising incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea throughout Nigeria’s coastal communities. </p>
<p>Maritime insecurity also has a gender dimension. <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-a-mainstay-of-fishing-in-west-africa-but-they-get-a-raw-deal-159283">Women in West African fisheries</a> face unique challenges and risks such as poor access to capital, growing competition for access to depleting fish stocks, and policy exclusion. </p>
<h2>Neglect and poor regulations</h2>
<p>Despite the important contribution that fishing makes to the livelihoods of Nigerians, government neglects this sector. This is evident in the <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/416939-less-than-2-of-nigerias-budget-allocated-to-capital-agriculture-projects-official.html">marginal budgetary allocation</a> the sector receives yearly. </p>
<p>The Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Department of Nigeria’s Federal Fisheries Department is critical to managing Nigeria’s fisheries. Yet no <a href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.789143">budgetary allocation</a> has been made to it in the last 15 years. </p>
<p>The Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Department lacks patrol vessels, and is therefore unable to monitor the activities of vessels operating in Nigeria. In 2017, the government <a href="https://punchng.com/govt-to-purchase-patrol-vessels-to-protect-waterways/">announced plans</a> to purchase patrol vessels, but it hasn’t done so yet.</p>
<p>The sector doesn’t receive enough funding to function effectively. Nigeria’s Fisheries Department operates within the country’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which was allocated less than <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/416939-less-than-2-of-nigerias-budget-allocated-to-capital-agriculture-projects-official.html">2%</a> of the national budget in 2019. </p>
<p>Existing fisheries regulation is also inadequate. Nigeria’s fisheries are governed by the <a href="http://extwprlegs1.fao.org/docs/pdf/nig18399.pdf">Sea Fisheries Act of 1992</a>. These regulations are outdated and ill-equipped to address the current scale and severity of growing fisheries crime. </p>
<p>For example, in June 2020, a vessel, Hai Lu Feng 11, was fined <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/06/arrested-chinese-vessel-slammed-n3million-fine/#:%7E:text=THE%20recently%20arrested%20and%20released%20Chinese%20fishing%20vessel,Maritime%20Administration%20and%20Safety%20Agency%2C%20NIMASA%2C%20has%20said.">₦3 million </a> (under $7,300) for switching off its Vessel Monitoring System while in <a href="https://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/NGA_1978_Decree.pdf">Nigeria’s Exclusive Economic Zone</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/w9633e/w9633e.pdf">Vessel Monitoring System</a> is designed to provide estimates of fishing activity in near real time. Switching the system off suggests an intent to evade detection by the authorities. But this fine is tiny when considering the millions of dollars that illegal fishing costs the Nigerian economy each year.</p>
<h2>Solutions to illegal fishing</h2>
<p>Solving the problem of illegal fishing in Nigeria requires that the Federal Department of Fisheries is supported to operate effectively. As the agency charged to ensure the sustainable exploitation of Nigeria’s fisheries, it must be adequately funded. </p>
<p>Current fisheries regulations must also be updated to reflect the current realities and impacts of fisheries crime.</p>
<p>A holistic and collaborative approach is critical to addressing fisheries crime. A national maritime security strategy is needed to guide and facilitate inter-agency and regional cooperation. The strategy should include the establishment of an information-sharing platform. </p>
<p>The capture of the pirates that targeted Hai Lu Feng 11 vessel by the Nigeria navy was <a href="https://fcwc-fish.org/our-news/fcwc-regions-interagency-cooperation-leads-to-arrest-of-vessel-hijackers">supported</a> by the <a href="https://fcwc-fish.org/">Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea</a>. This was through the regional online communications platform established under the <a href="https://fcwc-fish.org/projects/watf">West Africa Task Force</a>. </p>
<p>This shows that cooperation between fisheries agencies and other maritime enforcement agencies is critical to stemming the tide of illegal fishing – and other crime at sea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood receives funding from the Scottish Funding Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sayra van den Berg Bhagwandas receives funding from the Scottish Funding Council. </span></em></p>Nigeria must address illegal fishing, which depletes the country’s fish stocks, undermines livelihoods and pushes people into poverty.Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood, Lecturer, University of St AndrewsSayra van den Berg Bhagwandas, Postdoctoral researcher, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1612472021-05-21T14:11:54Z2021-05-21T14:11:54ZIEA report: world’s leading energy adviser was founded to protect oil supplies – now it wants to ban new fossil fuels<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402116/original/file-20210521-23-1ntjlnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8500%2C5662&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oil-field-site-evening-pumps-running-1330760627">Zhengzaishuru/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Established in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created to maintain the stability of the international oil supply. As an independent adviser to many governments on energy policy, the IEA has the authority to make member states release reserve oil stocks to stabilise prices. The agency has used that power on three occasions, most recently in response to the disruption to oil production in the US gulf caused by Hurricane Katrina.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050">recent report</a>, the IEA modelled how governments, energy companies and banks could meet the Paris agreement’s goal of halting global warming at 1.5°C. By sketching a road map of policy recommendations, the agency also revealed how energy generation globally could reach net zero emissions by 2050. </p>
<p>The IEA is no one’s idea of a radical voice on climate change. In fact, its ideas on reforming energy policy to meet this challenge have often erred on the side of caution and <a href="https://www.iea.org/topics/world-energy-outlook">favoured incremental change</a>. So it came as a surprise when the recent report called for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/18/no-new-investment-in-fossil-fuels-demands-top-energy-economist">an immediate ban</a> on new oil, coal and gas development. </p>
<p>With relatively conservative institutions like the IEA now calling time on new fossil fuel exploration, it’s safe to assume something big is underway in energy policy worldwide.</p>
<h2>Net zero emissions</h2>
<p>In the report’s most ambitious scenario for the transformation of energy, which details an overhaul of supply and demand and an unprecedented level of international cooperation, coal would be phased out completely by 2050. Demand for oil would reduce to 72 million barrels a day by 2030 – well below the nadir reached during the lockdowns of 2020. </p>
<p>Since the report claimed that “no new oil and gas fields are required”, oil majors like ExxonMobil can no longer refer to <a href="https://click.newsletters.ft.com/f/a/x87cin5rIjAOoGBjN5j9iw%7E%7E/AAAAAQA%7E/RgRiiMZCP0SDaHR0cHM6Ly9jb3Jwb3JhdGUuZXh4b25tb2JpbC5jb20vRW5lcmd5LWFuZC1pbm5vdmF0aW9uL091dGxvb2stZm9yLUVuZXJneS9PdXRsb29rLWZvci1FbmVyZ3ktQS1wZXJzcGVjdGl2ZS10by0yMDQwI1RoZUR1YWxDaGFsbGVuZ2VXCGZpbnRpbWVzQgpgpUVBpmBLU4oHUhR2cm9lYmVuQGR1bmRlZS5hYy51a1gEAAAAAA%7E%7E">the IEA</a> to project demand. It also spells the end for a “<a href="https://click.newsletters.ft.com/f/a/ikNaR1qADZRZk-3Z-pOIYQ%7E%7E/AAAAAQA%7E/RgRiiMZCP0RcaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaWVhLm9yZy9uZXdzL2llYS1zcGVjaWFsLXJlcG9ydC1leHBsb3Jlcy1wb3RlbnRpYWwtZm9yLWdvbGRlbi1hZ2Utb2YtbmF0dXJhbC1nYXNXCGZpbnRpbWVzQgpgpUVBpmBLU4oHUhR2cm9lYmVuQGR1bmRlZS5hYy51a1gEAAAAAA%7E%7E">golden age of gas</a>” which the IEA had enthused about only a decade ago. Oil prices would be expected to fall steeply, from US$35 (£25) a barrel in 2035 to US$24 in 2050. Per capita income in already vulnerable producer economies <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-producer-economies">such as Nigeria</a> could <a href="https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad0d4830-bd7e-47b6-838c-40d115733c13/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector.pdf">plunge by as much as 75%</a>. </p>
<p>To compensate, the report says that huge international investment will be needed to add 1,020 gigawatts of solar and wind power a year by 2030 – four times the 261 gigawatts <a href="https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2021/Apr/IRENA_-RE_Capacity_Highlights_2021.pdf?la=en&hash=1E133689564BC40C2392E85026F71A0D7A9C0B91#:%7E:text=Renewable%20generation%20capacity%20increased%20by,energy%20increased%20by%20164%20MW">installed in 2020</a>. The battery capacity installed in electric vehicles would need to rise to 6,600 gigawatt hours in 2030, up from around 160 gigawatt hours today. Newly added nuclear energy capacity would hit 17 gigawatts a year up to 2030, and afterwards, 24 gigawatts a year – far more than even the World Nuclear Association – an international advocate for the industry – <a href="https://click.newsletters.ft.com/f/a/Uv-gOQy6WgEYPxelKNbb6g%7E%7E/AAAAAQA%7E/RgRiiMZCP0R1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud29ybGQtbnVjbGVhci5vcmcvaW5mb3JtYXRpb24tbGlicmFyeS9jdXJyZW50LWFuZC1mdXR1cmUtZ2VuZXJhdGlvbi9wbGFucy1mb3ItbmV3LXJlYWN0b3JzLXdvcmxkd2lkZS5hc3B4VwhmaW50aW1lc0IKYKVFQaZgS1OKB1IUdnJvZWJlbkBkdW5kZWUuYWMudWtYBAAAAAA%7E">expects</a>.</p>
<p>All this depends on rapid innovation to create technologies “not yet available on the market to be demonstrated very quickly at scale”, according to the IEA report. More than half of the emissions reductions the report foresees will depend on behavioural changes among the general public, including support for new cycle lanes and high-speed rail.</p>
<h2>A global energy transition</h2>
<p>The report indicates that the world is on the cusp of unprecedented change in national and international energy policy. This would represent much more than each state doing its duty under the Paris agreement to submit increasingly more ambitious emissions reductions pledges. </p>
<p>The IEA was conceived for the hydrocarbon age when energy was primarily subject to sovereignty. This has made the energy sector, more than many others, resistant to any centralising tendency. But if the agency’s founding mission was to coordinate government responses to oil supply instability, its conclusion that new oil and gas fields are surplus to requirement suggests the economists advising world leaders on the transition to sustainable energy may have found a new appetite for cooperation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A row of ground-mounted solar panels with a pylon in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402121/original/file-20210521-23-e5220t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The days of centralised energy reserves may be over.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/solar-panel-against-high-voltage-towers-160923935">C12/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While fossil fuels exist in highly centralised reserves, renewable generation, like wind and solar, is everywhere. Exploiting these sources globally will depend on countries developing and sharing green technology, operating electricity grids across borders and coordinating transnational energy markets. With this <a href="https://click.newsletters.ft.com/f/a/-W0BCl0-2vZZ5XuwwohcYg%7E%7E/AAAAAQA%7E/RgRiiMZCP0QsaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaWVhLm9yZy9yZXBvcnRzL25ldC16ZXJvLWJ5LTIwNTBXCGZpbnRpbWVzQgpgpUVBpmBLU4oHUhR2cm9lYmVuQGR1bmRlZS5hYy51a1gEAAAAAA%7E%7E">model</a>, the IEA is redefining itself as a clean energy hub, capable of governing the process. </p>
<p>Some countries have already <a href="https://click.newsletters.ft.com/f/a/-2BFE3_4gKsT5pwyWRVh4Q%7E%7E/AAAAAQA%7E/RgRiiMZCP0RpaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmV1dGVycy5jb20vYnVzaW5lc3MvZW5lcmd5L2FzaWEtc251YnMtaWVhcy1jYWxsLXN0b3AtbmV3LWZvc3NpbC1mdWVsLWludmVzdG1lbnRzLTIwMjEtMDUtMTkvVwhmaW50aW1lc0IKYKVFQaZgS1OKB1IUdnJvZWJlbkBkdW5kZWUuYWMudWtYBAAAAAA%7E">pushed back</a> against the IEA’s analysis and its call for cooperation. But each has its own obligations under international law to meet the 2015 Paris agreement’s demands. The report merely spells out a feasible pathway for all states to comply with them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Volker Roeben has received funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund.</span></em></p>The seismic changes to energy supply and demand during the pandemic could be just the beginning.Volker Roeben, Professor of Energy Law and Global Regulation, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1583802021-05-21T12:24:36Z2021-05-21T12:24:36ZHow electric cars can advance environmental justice: By putting low-income and racially diverse drivers behind the wheel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401958/original/file-20210520-19-1q6i4xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C22%2C5004%2C3303&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Electric cars charging at Washington, DC's Union Station.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/EarthDayEVgo/70529e01dbd2449c81edf1ff71bacaf0/photo">AP Photo/Susan Walsh</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The global auto industry has begun a <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/billions-poured-into-electric-vehicle-companies-but-much-more-will-be-needed-before-the-auto-industry-changes-11615834509">historic shift</a> from gas- and diesel-fueled cars to electric vehicles. President Biden’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/">infrastructure plan</a> seeks to speed up this transition by requesting billions of dollars to modernize the electric grid and build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. </p>
<p>Evidence shows that many Americans are eager to transition to EVs and participate in a clean energy economy. In a recent <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/cr-survey-shows-strong-interest-in-evs/">nationally representative consumer survey</a>, 71% of drivers surveyed said they were interested in getting an electric car. But 48% said that lack of access to public charging infrastructure was holding them back, and 43% cited vehicle cost as a disincentive. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.urbandrea.com/research">My research</a> focuses on ways to make cities more sustainable, healthy and equitable places to live. In my view, making EVs and charging infrastructure accessible to all drivers is crucial for achieving clean transportation and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00681-w">energy justice</a>.</p>
<h2>Who is hurt most by vehicle pollution?</h2>
<p>People of color bear disproportionate harms from fossil fuels. For example, Black people in the U.S. are more likely than white people to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-poverty-people-color-living-industry/">live near oil refineries and petrochemical plants</a>. </p>
<p>People who live in these neighborhoods experience higher levels of exposure to <a href="https://environmentalintegrity.org/news/refineries-emit-benzene-in-amounts-above-epa-action-levels/">toxic emissions such as benzene, mercury and sulfuric acid</a> than those who don’t live near these industries. They also have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139122">higher rates of heart disease, cancer and asthma</a>. </p>
<p>Contamination from these facilities <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10835547.2015.12091421">drives down home prices</a>. Reduced property values make it <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.20121656">hard for families to build wealth</a> or sell their homes and move away from toxic pollutants.</p>
<p>Burning gasoline in cars produces smog-causing <a href="https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/particle-pollution">particulate pollution</a>, including fine particulates, referred to as PM2.5 because they are less than 2.5 microns wide – 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. These particles penetrate deeply into humans’ lungs and enter their bloodstreams. PM2.5 exposure can trigger asthma and chronic bronchitis, and has been linked to increased mortality from <a href="https://www.lung.org/getmedia/99cc945c-47f2-4ba9-ba59-14c311ca332a/electric-vehicle-report.pdf">lung cancer and heart disease</a>. </p>
<p>People of color are <a href="https://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Auto-Insurance-Disparate-Racial-Impacts_Report.pdf">less likely to own cars</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/07/who-relies-on-public-transit-in-the-u-s/">more likely to use public transit</a> than their white counterparts, so they generate a disproportionately small share of motor vehicle pollution. But they suffer disproportionately large impacts. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7S8CXEVjIh4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Black and Hispanic Americans are exposed to significantly more air pollution than they cause.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The American Lung Association reports that people of color are <a href="https://www.lung.org/getmedia/99cc945c-47f2-4ba9-ba59-14c311ca332a/electric-vehicle-report.pdf">3.5 times more likely than white people</a> to live in a county with a failing air quality grade. A groundbreaking 2019 study estimated that Black and Latino populations experience <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6001">56% and 63% more pollution respectively than their activities cause</a>. In contrast, whites experience about 17% less air pollution exposure than their consumption causes. </p>
<p>Respiratory illness rates reflect this inequity. Black and Latino children in the U.S. are diagnosed with asthma at <a href="https://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/NHIS/SHS/2018_SHS_Table_C-1.pdf">higher rates than white children</a>. Latino children are <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=60">almost twice as likely to die from asthma</a> as white children. For Black children the death rate from asthma is <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=15">almost eight times higher</a> than for white children.</p>
<p>Recent polls show higher rates of concern about climate change among <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/race-and-climate-change/">Latinos (69%) and Black Americans (57%) compared with whites (49%)</a>. Among Latino voters, 85% believe it is <a href="https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/content/latinos_and_climate_change_factsheet_0317_refresh.pdf">important to reduce smog and air pollution</a> and want to see government action on this issue. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1364608669850165253"}"></div></p>
<h2>The economic benefits of driving an EV</h2>
<p>Electric vehicles have the potential to greatly reduce air pollution from transportation. They also are less expensive to own and operate over time. </p>
<p>New EVs are rapidly reaching price parity with gas-powered cars. A Tesla sedan <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/evs-offer-big-savings-over-traditional-gas-powered-cars/">costs less</a> than a comparable gas-powered BMW. Even when an EV’s sticker price is higher, significant <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/electric-vs-gas-it-cheaper-drive-ev">savings on fuel and maintenance over time</a> more than make up the difference.</p>
<p>Maintenance and fuel savings from EVs offer great potential benefits for low-income households, which spend <a href="http://bakercenter.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Equity-Impacts-of-Fuel-Economy-Report_final.pdf">a greater share of their income on fuel</a> than affluent households. Consumer Reports estimated in 2020 that owning an EV costs <a href="https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/EV-Ownership-Cost-Final-Report-1.pdf">US$800 to $1,300 less</a> for every 15,000 miles driven than owning a conventional car. </p>
<p>EVs have far fewer moving parts than conventional cars because their power comes from a battery, not an internal combustion engine. As a result, they require less maintenance, saving drivers time, money and stress. Consumer Reports estimated that electric vehicles cost owners <a href="https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/EV-Ownership-Cost-Final-Report-1.pdf">about $4,600 less to repair and maintain </a> over the cars’ lifetime than conventional cars. </p>
<p>Before the pandemic, unexpected car repairs were the <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/%7E/media/assets/2015/10/emergency-savings-report-1_artfinal.pdf">most common financial shock</a> for U.S. households. Low-income families, which are disproportionately Black and Latino, were more likely to experience such shocks and took longer to recover than white families.</p>
<p><iframe id="M8pBk" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/M8pBk/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Creating better incentives and access</h2>
<p>Today 45 states and the District of Columbia provide incentives for buying certain gas-electric hybrid or electric vehicles. But these programs are <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/state-electric-vehicle-incentives-state-chart.aspx">almost exclusively for new vehicles</a>, which means they help only a small subset of car buyers – mainly affluent consumers who buy new cars. For example, in the state of Washington, new cars make up <a href="https://www.autosinnovate.org/resources/insights/wa">fewer than 5% of registered vehicles</a> every year. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://energynews.us/2020/12/14/in-chicago-another-roadblock-for-would-be-ev-drivers-charging-deserts/">Charging deserts</a>” are one barrier to EV adoption. Advocates in California want CALGreen, the state’s green building code, to <a href="https://calmatters.org/commentary/my-turn/2021/02/update-green-building-codes-to-make-ev-charging-available-for-everyone/">require EV chargers in new multifamily housing</a>, which would make at-home charging more accessible to to urban and lower-income residents. </p>
<p>Drivers also need better access to public charging stations away from home. The New York City Department of Transportation has partnered with a local power utility to install <a href="https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-new-york-canada-business-8b1bd4410763cb7ddcbb05af2435953c">100 charging stations at curbside locations</a> on city streets. </p>
<p>Expanded purchase incentives can help to steadily grow the number of EVs on the road. Currently, there are few subsidies available for buying used EVs, and none for people who lease their cars. Creating new financing programs for low- and moderate-income consumers who want to buy EVs can broaden access to clean cars. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-lyft-want-more-public-subsidies-meet-california-ev-mandates-2021-05-12/">Special purchase incentives</a> should also be extended to ride-share drivers, who spend much more time on the road than most drivers. Without such support, these drivers could be forced into costly payment plans for new EVs as states like California begin to mandate clean cars for everyone on the road. </p>
<p>California has proposed a <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/climate-change/2021/05/uber-lyft-electric-cars-california-mandate-weighed/">phased transition</a> over the next decade, with 90% of ride-share cars on the road to be EVs by 2030. Since Uber and Lyft are multibillion-dollar companies that <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/ride-hailing-climate-risks">create about 70% more emissions than the rides they displace</a>, I believe they should be required to contribute generously to incentive programs. </p>
<p>The electric vehicle transition has great potential to benefit Black and Latino communities, which are disproportionately affected by fossil fuel pollution. Carefully targeted incentives and investments can make clean cars accessible for everyone on the road, mitigate the harms caused by gas-powered vehicles and move the U.S. toward achieving energy and climate justice.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Marpillero-Colomina is affiliated with GreenLatinos, a 501c3 organization. She is their Clean Transportation advocate.</span></em></p>Electric cars offer benefits for low-income and minority drivers, including cleaner air and lower maintenance costs. But it will take more than rebates on new models to make EVs accessible for all.Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, Adjunct Lecturer in Urban Studies, The New SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1478182020-10-27T14:30:20Z2020-10-27T14:30:20ZThe risk of ‘peak oil demand’ for Canada’s Conservatives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365300/original/file-20201023-13-18eaiy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5245%2C3258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole holds his first news conference as leader on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in August 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s no secret that the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is the energy sector’s greatest ally in federal politics. The party’s opposition to carbon pricing and support for just about anything that increases the ease at which energy producers can extract, refine and transport oil has made the CPC overwhelmingly popular among voters <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-federal-election-2019-conservative-sweep-of-alberta-illustrates-deep/">in Alberta</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-conservative-win-1.5330084">and Saskatchewan</a>.</p>
<p>As long as non-renewable resources remain an important engine of economic growth and employment in Canada, the federal Conservatives may very well remain competitive. If, however, we are truly approaching <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7333595/opec-oil-demand-forecast-bp-2020/#:%7E:text=BP%20says%20it%20expects%20demand,report%20on%20the%20industry's%20outlook.">peak global demand</a> for oil, the CPC may need to rethink its electoral strategy. What that strategy might be is anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>Federal parties <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/electoral-system-and-the-party-system-in-canada-19211965/713613A87E6A3C40A15F7B4452696A07">rely on regional bases</a> of party support. The dominance of the Liberal Party of Canada over the 20th century, for example, is often understood to be a direct result of the party’s ability to leverage its electoral strength east of the Ottawa River to compensate for its volatile and ephemeral support in western Canada. </p>
<p>The Conservatives, on the other hand, have typically dominated in western Canada, winning elections when the Liberals perform poorly in Ontario and Québec.</p>
<p>A quick glance at recent federal election results by province illustrates the Conservatives’ narrow base of support. In each federal election since 2006, the CPC has won at least 85 per cent of seats in Alberta, 71 per cent of seats in Saskatchewan and a plurality of seats in British Columbia. </p>
<h2>Western popularity</h2>
<p>Though support for the CPC seems to be on the decline in British Columbia, this could not be further from the truth in Alberta and Saskatchewan. <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/results/">In 2019</a>, for example, the Conservative Party won 33 of 34 seats in Alberta, and swept all 14 seats in Saskatchewan. So why is the CPC so popular in these provinces?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1297762038169473025"}"></div></p>
<p>Most indicators point to their position on Canada’s resource sector. Chastising the governing Liberals for imposing a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-conservative-climate-change-carbon-tax-1.5330934">carbon tax</a>, implementing more stringent <a href="https://financialpost.com/news/election-2019/how-a-liberal-or-conservative-win-could-affect-canadas-economy">regulations on pipeline developments</a> and, more recently, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/canada-banning-plastic-bags-straws-cutlery-and-other-single-use-items-by-the-end-of-2021-1.5135968">banning single-use plastics</a> at the expense of Alberta’s petrochemical industry, the Conservatives have explicitly branded themselves as the resource sector’s only friend in Ottawa.</p>
<p>As long as the CPC is able to capture at least a third of seats in Ontario and the Liberals don’t sweep Québec — a reasonable possibility at any given point in time — the Conservatives should remain competitive. So what’s the problem?</p>
<p>If global demand for oil and gas rebounds and remains robust into the future, the CPC might not have a problem. Increasingly, however, this future looks unlikely. </p>
<h2>An earlier than expected peak?</h2>
<p>Recent reports commissioned by the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-iea-calls-for-profound-changes-as-energy-growth-set-to-end/">International Energy Agency</a>, the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/article-opec-sees-oil-demand-plateauing-in-late-2030s-marking-a-major-shift/">Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries</a>, and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/14/global-oil-demand-may-have-passed-peak-says-bp-energy-report">British oil and gas multinational, BP</a>, have all indicated that global demand for oil could peak sooner than previously imagined. </p>
<p>Depending on several factors — such as the medium- to long-term impact of COVID-19, as well as the speed at which governments adopt clean energy policies — global demand for oil should peak sometime between the early 2020s and early 2030s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pumpjack is seen surrounded by a golden wheat field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365301/original/file-20201023-21-18pj20n.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An oil and gas pumpjack near Cremona, Alta., is seen in the middle of wheat field on Oct. 1, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic and government policies to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy, the growing environmental movement that swept across the globe before the coronavirus may shift private investments away from oil and gas toward emerging clean energy technologies. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/27/climate-crisis-6-million-people-join-latest-wave-of-worldwide-protests">international climate protests</a> and long-lasting <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6540264/pipeline-protests-railways-stress/">pipeline blockades</a> are not good for business.</p>
<h2>Not necessarily doomed</h2>
<p>This is not to say that the Conservatives are doomed in the near future; <a href="https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/science-data/data-analysis/energy-data-analysis/energy-facts/energy-and-economy/20062">in 2019</a>, the energy sector directly employed nearly 300,000 people and indirectly supported over 550,000 jobs, including jobs in renewables. If, however, investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector continues to decline — as it has since the end of the commodity boom in 2014 — the number of Canadians with a vested interest in the energy sector may decline with it.</p>
<p>Barring the possibility that current forecasts of the oil sector’s future are completely off base, the CPC will be forced to rebuild its brand. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, it doesn’t appear as though they’ll be able to win by casting themselves as the party of fiscal discipline or the most competent managers of the economy. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pierre Poilievre shouts in the House of Commons." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365302/original/file-20201023-17-1swq72f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre Poilievre’s attempts to criticize the Liberals’ financial management prowess is largely falling on deaf ears.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite Conservative finance critic <a href="https://financialpost.com/news/economy/bank-of-canada-becoming-atm-for-trudeau-conservatives-caution">Pierre Poilievre’s efforts</a> to cast the Liberals as profligate and incompetent managers of the economy, he seems to be swimming against the current. In the midst of historically low interest rates — along with indications that they will not be rising anytime soon — <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/angrynomics/9781788212793">economists</a> and <a href="https://www.osler.com/en/about-us/press-room/2020/bank-of-canada-is-close-to-its-policy-limits-poloz-says-financial-post-bloomberg">central bankers</a> continue to urge governments not to worry about deficit spending to stimulate the economy. </p>
<p>In fact, the very people known to be most concerned about public finances are telling politicians that, in the words of <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/powell-says-u-s-economy-needs-more-fiscal-support-11601995205">Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell</a>, governments should err on the side of providing too much fiscal support rather than too little.</p>
<p>Though it may be time for the CPC to rethink its brand, it’s far from clear what it should be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Abbott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent industry reports indicate that we may be approaching peak global demand for oil. If that’s the case, the federal Conservatives may need to rethink their electoral strategy.Christopher Abbott, PhD Candidate in Political Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1455642020-09-22T09:58:03Z2020-09-22T09:58:03ZCheap plastic is flooding developing countries – we’re making new biodegradable materials to help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359313/original/file-20200922-16-rp9yw4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5947%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/plastic-bag-on-beach-sunrise-769353424">Bubbers BB/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Squeezed by <a href="https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/how-the-pandemic-wiped-out-oil-demand-around-the-world/75103163">lower fuel demand</a> during the pandemic and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/14/global-oil-demand-may-have-passed-peak-says-bp-energy-report">rise of renewable energy</a>, the oil industry is staking out a new future for itself in plastics. Instead of powering vehicles or generating electricity, oil companies are increasingly looking to use their product to <a href="https://theconversation.com/fossil-fuel-industry-sees-the-future-in-hard-to-recycle-plastic-123631">manufacture cheap plastic packaging</a>, which they can sell in lower to middle income countries. </p>
<p>The problem? Many countries lack the means to recycle even their own plastics. Countries in the developing world are <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-to-the-plastic-you-recycle-researchers-lift-the-lid-142831">already inundated</a> with plastic exported for sorting and reprocessing by higher income nations, so oil companies are effectively threatening to flood the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-plastics-trade.html">developing world</a> with a new wave of virtually <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled">unrecyclable plastics</a>. Companies in the US are setting the groundwork for this right now by lobbying to undermine Kenya’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/kenya-plastic-oil-industry-lobbies-us">plastic bag ban</a>. </p>
<p>The vast amounts of plastic waste that have already accumulated in the developing world are not being <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution">adequately managed</a>. Landfill and incineration are the most common solutions, but burning plastics releases <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/15/indonesias-food-chain-turns-toxic-as-plastic-waste-exports-flood-in">toxic chemicals</a>. In reprocessing or landfill facilities, plastics often escape to <a href="https://www.lastbeachcleanup.org/plastic-waste-exports">choke rivers and coastal seas</a>. Even lying around on the soil, plastics cause problems. A team of researchers in China found that the number and variety of insects and worms in soil was significantly reduced when LDPE – the kind of plastic carrier bags are made from – was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/02/microplastic-pollution-devastating-soil-species-study-finds">spread over the earth</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A world map highlighting countries according to proportion of plastic waste they mismanage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359069/original/file-20200921-22-ht9k3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Developing countries have some of the highest rates of plastic waste mismanagement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768/">Jambeck et al. (2015)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As pressure to sell more plastics to the developing world grows, so does the body of evidence demonstrating the harms caused by this waste accumulating in the environment. This calls for locking waste plastics in “safe sinks”, like wood-plastic composites. </p>
<h2>Biodegradable composites</h2>
<p>Waste plastics from homes and businesses, like used carrier bags, can be collected, cleaned and combined with natural materials such as sawdust. These new composite materials lock plastic debris in a stable form, preventing it from being broken up and scattered into soils and the ocean. New materials could eventually replace plastics derived from petroleum and turn off the tap of new plastics production. But for now, these safe sinks are a vital step.</p>
<p>Our team at Universiti Sumatera Utara (the University of North Sumatra) in Indonesia recently <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236406">developed a wood-plastic composite</a> for use in construction. Combining LDPE and durian wood sawdust from a local sawmill, we pressed out composite materials suitable for building homes, fencing and furniture. Our study demonstrated that <a href="https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/15282">termites</a> native to Indonesia can ingest these composite materials when buried in the soil, but we still need further research. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close-up image of a white termite." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359110/original/file-20200921-16-1kojwsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rubber termites (<em>Coptotermes curvignathus</em>) are native to Indonesia, but are an invasive pest elsewhere.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.padil.gov.au/pests-and-diseases/pest/main/139844#">Sarah McCaffrey/Museums Victoria</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The termites have LDPE in their guts, but we’re not yet sure if they are digesting the plastics entirely or just breaking them up into micro and nano-plastics. Some <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/news/termites-may-hold-solution-to-polythene-waste.html">termites</a> cultivate <a href="http://www.phytojournal.com/archives/2018/vol7issue2/PartAH/7-2-52-668.pdf">microorganisms</a> in their nests which can degrade LDPE plastics. Do ours? If not, introducing new termites or microbes that aren’t indigenous to Sumatra might create even bigger problems. </p>
<p>North Sumatra is home to rainforests, rhinos and tigers, and local ecosystems are <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/764/">vulnerable</a>. People living in remote communities typically want the convenience of consumer goods, processed food, medicines and other amenities that come with plastic packaging. But they don’t want the waste it generates. Most of these communities lack solid waste management services, so burning and burying are their only options. While people on the nearby Indonesian island of Java enjoy a higher standard of living, their rivers are more <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06mfk3y">polluted with plastic</a> than any others in the world.</p>
<p>Our wood-plastic composite could replace wood, plastic decking or fencing, diverting plastic waste from the environment and easing the pressure on forests for building supplies. But we also need to test if our biodegradeable composite is safe. We don’t yet know if it will be more or less of a fire hazard than other building materials available on the Indonesian market. Flammability assessments are important – recycled plastic decking recently caught fire and burned down an ancient <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-08/ancient-rock-art-lost-after-plastic-walkway-explodes-in-bushfire/11848938">archaeological site in Australia</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two images comparing termites on the wood-plastic composite in the lab and a termite nest in the wild." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359135/original/file-20200921-18-19u6d7n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Termites decomposing the wood-plastic composite on the left, versus a termite nest in the wild on the right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236406#pone-0236406-g001">Nuryawan et al. (2020)/PLOS One</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Global materials research</h2>
<p>Durian wood evolved in concert with insect and microbial life in Indonesia that was capable of decomposing it. Combining plastic waste with materials that are part of local ecosystems could ensure that resulting composites are biodegradable within the environments they’re created, wherever that is in the world. Scientists have discovered some aspects of natural systems that can break up and degrade plastics. We used termites and their associated microbes, but <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-00593-y">moth larvae</a> and plastic-eating <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria-could-fuel-a-recycling-revolution">bacteria</a> might also work.</p>
<p>Worldwide, sawmills are producing dust and flour from local wood that could be combined with ubiquitous plastic waste. Where emerging markets are likely to be targeted with cheap plastic packaging, scientists could adapt our procedure for making composite materials to local conditions. </p>
<p>These composite materials are promising as safe sinks for plastic waste, but they take time to develop. They’re most useful for countries inundated with plastic waste which lack the capital investment for most technical fixes, and have an even greater problem developing reliable solid waste management infrastructure. Though plastics are a global issue, it is this kind of low-cost, local research that can help solve the plastics crisis where it is felt most acutely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deirdre McKay receives funding from UKRI's Global Challenges Research Fund via Keele University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arif Nuryawan received funding from Universitas Sumatera Utara.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mohammad Basyuni received funding from Universitas Sumatera Utara.</span></em></p>By combining plastic waste with durian wood sawdust, we may have found a way to slow the rise of plastic pollution in Indonesia.Deirdre McKay, Reader in Geography and Environmental Politics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452172020-08-28T19:03:32Z2020-08-28T19:03:32ZA burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355358/original/file-20200828-22-ak8va5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C131%2C2290%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Smoke billowed from the fire at a chlorine plant in Westlake, Louisiana, after Hurricane Laura moved through on Aug. 27. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Tropical-Weather-Louisiana/5de715f074584e6181260928c0445435/5/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hurricane Laura plowed through the heart of Louisiana’s oil and chemical industries as a powerful Category 4 storm, leaving a chlorine plant on fire and the potential for more hazardous damage in its wake.</p>
<p>The burning BioLab facility sent dark smoke <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?475226-1/louisiana-governor-edwards-hurricane-briefing">and chlorine gas into the air</a> over the small community of Westlake, near Lake Charles, and shut down Interstate 10, officials said. The governor warned residents, already reeling from the hurricane’s damage, to <a href="https://twitter.com/LouisianaGov/status/1299009238317043712">stay in their homes</a>, close their windows and doors, and turn off any air conditioning that might still be operating.</p>
<p>While the full health impacts of the fire weren’t immediately known, a storm-driven chlorine gas release in a vulnerable community is the type of worst-case scenario that scientists and <a href="https://www.lsu.edu/eng/cee/people/Pardue.php">engineers like myself</a> have warned the petrochemical industry about for decades.</p>
<p>These warnings have followed spills and fires at chemical facilities over the past 15 years, including those <a href="https://bstiweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Petroleum-and-Hazardous-Material-Releases-from-Industrial-Facilities-Associated-with-Hurricane-Katrina1.pdf">triggered by Hurricane Katrina</a>’s storm surge and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-harvey-spills/oil-and-chemical-spills-from-hurricane-harvey-big-but-dwarfed-by-katrina-idUSKCN1BQ1E8">Hurricane Harvey’s excessive rainfall</a>.</p>
<p>Hurricane Laura’s damage will reveal itself over the coming days. The storm passed directly over the large Hackberry oil field, located in a sensitive marsh environment south of Lake Charles. The area includes thousands of active and abandoned wells and associated infrastructure, such as storage tanks and pipelines.</p>
<p>Crews were mobilizing to assess the damage in the oil field as the remnants of Laura moved north. The region has experienced a large loss of energy jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. It is unknown whether this contraction affected the preparation of this oil field and others for the storm. </p>
<h2>Relaxed safety rules put vulnerable people at risk</h2>
<p>Extreme storms like Hurricane Laura are rare, but they carry the potential for very significant, even fatal, chemical exposures for displaced people. As the chlorine plant fire burned in Westlake, residents were told to try to shelter in place in homes already damaged by the storm.</p>
<p>These exposures occur outside of the U.S. regulatory safety net that aims to protect communities. Chemical plants often operate under <a href="https://www.deq.louisiana.gov/assets/docs/emergency_declarations/HURRICANELAURADEAO.pdf">emergency rules</a> that relax regulations during and immediately after severe storms.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Flooding and wind damage near Lake Charles, Louisiana." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355359/original/file-20200828-24-18bnmqh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hurricane Laura’s storm surge caused widespread flooding in the Lake Charles area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Tropical-Weather-Louisiana/ce6f56b2609b421298b21b7fbb9c26fd/37/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillips</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exposed residents are often the most vulnerable: elderly, poor and minority communities that can’t easily evacuate far prior to a storm. The Westlake chlorine fire was just miles from the remnants of Mossville, Louisiana, an unincorporated African American community that is a <a href="https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i12/Mossvilles-end.html">textbook example</a> of one decimated by pollution from these chemical plants.</p>
<h2>Why chemical tanks are so vulnerable to storms</h2>
<p>Over time, severe storms have revealed several technological failures that recur in nearly every large weather event.</p>
<p>Bulk chemical storage tanks like those prevalent in this part of Louisiana can float, even in relatively shallow water, due to the strong buoyant forces that act on them. They’re surrounded by containment basins, typically made of concrete or earth, but these basins are designed to contain spills in nonflooded conditions. Flooding is a different story. If a storm surge or heavy rain sends water into the basin, it can cause the tank to float. Once the water recedes, the tank can settle to the ground in ways that can damage the tank and cause a leak or worse.</p>
<p>Another common failure mode is the collapse of <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Failures-of-floating-roof-tanks-during-Harvey-12269513.php">floating roofs</a> used to contain vapors. Heavy rainfall can cause the roofs to sink, releasing chemicals from the tanks. Wind-driven buckling can also occur, even in the absence of flooding, and flying debris can also puncture tanks.</p>
<p>The failure of storage systems designed to keep the chemicals from reacting with air or water often produces the most dramatic releases. The <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/03/arkema-indictment-chemical-fire-hurricane-harvey/">Arkema chemical fire</a> during Hurricane Harvey and this chlorine gas release are examples of these high-visibility failures. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2018/03/30/arkema-disaster-harvey-regulations-texas-crosby/">People living near the Arkema plant sued</a>, saying the chemicals caused respiratory problems and contaminated their water. </p>
<p>The absence of plant workers during the storm can exacerbate these issues, and small problems can become large ones in the absence of any intervention. </p>
<h2>These systems can be made safer</h2>
<p>In an industry that thrives on innovation, few technologies have emerged to specifically address these failures.</p>
<p>While plant managers must plan for hurricanes, there is not a specific set of operational strategies or federal guidance that has evolved from previous storms. The most common mitigation method is to simply fill the tanks with more chemical to minimize floating.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>What is needed are real technologies that address the physics that drive tank failures. These include systems that allow buoyant forces to move tanks vertically, but not laterally. Tanks that allow rainwater to drain from floating roofs without accumulating are another.</p>
<p>Hardened storage systems that maintain the most reactive chemicals in a safe condition even under extreme weather are also needed.</p>
<p>Beyond safer tanks, chemical plants can improve their stewardship with surrounding communities by deploying sensing and surveillance systems that can detect releases. These systems could inform residents before, during and after storms and guide first responders to chemical releases in the immediate aftermath.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/09/how-beirut-blast-compared-with-similar-explosions-texas-china-france/">deadly Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut</a> at a warehouse storing ammonium nitrate and the explosion at a <a href="https://chinadialogue.net/en/pollution/9188-back-to-the-blast-zone-one-year-after-the-tianjin-explosion/">chemical warehouse that caught fire in Tianjin</a>, China, in 2015, are reminders that we have to be vigilant of what is being stored in our midst. It is time for industry to partner with its neighbors to develop safer systems for hurricanes and severe storms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Pardue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A storm-driven chlorine gas release in a vulnerable community is the type of worst-case scenario that scientists and engineers have warned about for decades.John Pardue, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Louisiana State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1339962020-04-15T13:32:56Z2020-04-15T13:32:56ZAfter the oil shock: Canada’s energy producers need support from Ottawa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327534/original/file-20200413-99788-1ofxnpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=185%2C461%2C3520%2C2185&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canadian oil wells will likely continue to be shut down amid weak prices despite an agreement among major oil producers to limit output. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buried underneath today’s coronavirus headlines is another shock that may, over the long term, be more consequential to the Canadian economy: the shaky collaboration between <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-07/saudis-plan-big-oil-output-hike-beginning-all-out-price-war">OPEC and Russia</a> on the amount of oil they collectively dump on the global energy market. </p>
<p>Their former production alliance — cobbled together to help manage global oil prices upon which their respective economies <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/saudi-arabias-vision-2030-reducing-the-dependency-on-oil/">desperately depend</a> — broke down on <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/08/813439501/saudi-arabia-stuns-world-with-massive-discount-in-oil-sold-to-asia-europe-and-u-">March 9</a>. </p>
<p>Saudi Arabia began dumping 10 million barrels per day (mbd) on the export market, sparking an all-out price war. Oil prices subsequently dropped between 20 and 30 per cent, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2020/03/09/brace-yourself-for-another-33-drop-in-the-price-of-crude-oil/#302cd25d7ca3">much of it in a single day</a>. Oil-producing countries <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/energy-environment/opec-russia-saudi-arabia-oil-coronavirus.html">have since reached a deal to cut production in an effort to stabilize oil prices</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327538/original/file-20200413-37259-1576a3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A woman checks the stocks on the screen at the Dubai Financial Market in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on March 8, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The price disruption will still hurt Canada, and the pain will fall particularly hard on Alberta, where producers are still staggering from the 50 per cent drop in prices they suffered more five years ago. At one point, the price of Alberta crude fell below $5 a barrel on global markets. </p>
<p>They also today face relentless environmental criticism for the “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/631f7726-b2b1-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c">dirty oil</a>” they extract, bickering and indecision from provincial and federal governments, and a long consultative processes with outside stakeholders. </p>
<p>It’s no wonder major energy investors, <a href="https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/warren-buffett-reportedly-pulls-out-of-lng-project-in-quebec-due-to-challenges-in-canada">ranging from Teck Resources to Warren Buffet now shun Canada</a>, or that energy companies that once called Canada home <a href="https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/encana-leaving-canada-is-a-wake-up-call-for-all-of-us">are now leaving</a>, taking jobs, expertise and tax dollars with them. </p>
<p>Could this perfect storm force Canada out of the oil production game for good? That should not be allowed to happen. It is in Canada’s national interest to remain a significant player in oil and gas production. </p>
<h2>The case for Canadian energy production</h2>
<p>First, the world needs — and will continue to need — carbon-based energy for decades to come. Before the current coronavirus pandemic, global oil consumption measured over 100 mbd, and in the absence of aggressive policy changes, is projected to rise <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2019">1.3 per cent per year until 2040, and then decrease</a>. Canada contributes 4.5 mbd to that total, and its proven reserves add stability to a volatile global market. </p>
<p>Second, eliminating Canadian oilsands production will not contribute much to efforts to fight climate change. True, oilsands production is more carbon-intensive than conventional sources. But those emissions fade to irrelevance when evaluating global totals. In 2014, <a href="https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/publications/18731">the oilsands contributed to 0.1 per cent of global emissions</a>. Most emissions continue to come from burning, not extracting, oil.</p>
<p>Third, whatever oil Canada stops producing will be replaced by <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/crude-volatility/9780231178143">others whose economies are critically dependent on oil revenue and would be happy to fill the gap</a>. Eliminating oil sands production would damage our economy, contribute little in ameliorating climate change and give a fiscal boost to other oil producers.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-is-just-the-latest-blow-to-oil-producers-133498">The coronavirus is just the latest blow to oil producers</a>
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<p>Finally, we are good at this. Canada’s strength in energy production — in engineering, finance and specialized ancillary services — took decades to build and the sector’s performance still <a href="https://www.tsx.com/listings/listing-with-us/sector-and-product-profiles/energy">matters to anyone who has a pension or exchange-traded mutual fund</a>.</p>
<p>We have also built emerging strengths in environmental, social and governance performance (ESG), which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0170840618765028">investors increasingly care about</a>. This mitigates the “<a href="https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/oilcurse.html">resource curse</a>” and gives us an advantage over many international oil competitors. </p>
<h2>What should we do now?</h2>
<p>First, companies need regulatory clarity. Without this, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2016.06.004">investment in technologies designed to reduce environmental footprints</a> will be choked. </p>
<p>They also need a government that values its oil industry and is committed to helping it get through the current crises and beyond. Economic help could include price supports to keep prices from falling below a certain level, direct investments in companies that could later be sold at a profit or tariffs on imported oil. Others have used such measures effectively, giving plenty of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g7cv">historical precedent</a>.</p>
<p>Canadian citizens can help by tempering altruism with realism. We can and should push for greener technologies and sources to take a greater portion of overall energy production. But it will take decades for green energy to fully replace carbon in the energy mix. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, carbon-based energy production generates jobs, taxes and expertise right now and Canadian oil companies can lead in ESG performance. It is OK to promote that too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133996/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Detomasi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is in Canada’s national interest to remain a significant player in the oil and gas production.David Detomasi, Associate Professor, Distinguished Faculty Fellow In International Business, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.