Guardian Unlimited | Special reports |
Exxon admits greenhouse gas increase
Terry Macalister
Thursday October 7, 2004
The Guardian
ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, has been increasing its
greenhouse gas emissions after supporting George Bush's refusal to
sign the Kyoto treaty.
The Texan oil firm, which is facing a consumer boycott in Europe over
its stance on climate change, is now producing more than twice the
CO2 pollution of a country such as Norway.
Exxon, which sells petrol under the Esso banner, saw its greenhouse
gas emissions jump 2% last year to 135.6m tonnes, according to new
figures verified by the company.
And last night an Exxon spokesman admitted that the company had no
targets for reductions in CO2 emissions although he insisted that it
was working hard on "energy efficiency" gains.
"We are taking steps to reduce greenhouse gases, but we are a major
producer of energy that society wants and you need [to burn] energy
to produce oil and gas," he said.
The growing levels of pollution from Exxon come on the back of annual
profits of $17bn (£9.4bn), the largest ever in the corporate world.
The company's emissions are more than 50% higher than those of rival
Britain's BP despite the US firm's oil and gas production being only
slightly larger.
BP produced 83.3m tonnes of greenhouse gases last year on the back of
3.8m barrels of oil and gas output a day.
Exxon's output was 4.4m barrels a day in 2003 with much of the
pollution coming from its refineries and chemical plants.
And at least one consultancy - Climate Mitigation Services in
Colorado - believes Exxon has hugely underestimated its own figures.
Its estimates, including power used for Exxon to run its own petrol
stations and tankers, would be closer to 379m tonnes.
While BP, under chief executive Lord Browne, has tackled the concerns
of climate change quite openly, Exxon has been more equivocal.
In the face of the Stop Esso campaign, Exxon has donated money to
climate change research and insists it is taking the issue seriously,
but it remains opposed to Kyoto.
"Like many other companies, we do not believe Kyoto is the right
approach. We fear it would impose dramatic economic costs in the
developed world, while doing little to achieve its goal of addressing
climate change since developing nations, which require most of the
world's increased needs for energy to grow their economies, have no
comparable commitments," says the Exxon website.
Exxon's worsening greenhouse gas record is partly due to increased
flaring of gas in Nigeria. Flaring occurs when natural gas is brought
out of the ground alongside oil, but is just burned off straight into
the atmosphere.
The company admits that nearly 600m cubic feet of gas was burned off
worldwide in 2003 compared with less than 450m in 2002.
Exxon says it will start to eliminate flaring from 2006, which it
says is ahead of the latest Nigerian government targets.
The deteriorating environmental performance by Exxon is "highly
dangerous", according to the Climate Justice Programme, a group of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and lawyers supporting court
action against polluters.
It points out that the first legal case brought in the US by eight
local states against five power companies started this summer. The
action in Manhattan calls on the firms to cut emissions because of
their harmful impact on the planet.
Peter Roderick, director of the Climate Justice Programme, said the
flaring of gas in Nigeria by Exxon was particularly "outrageous"
given the first attempts to outlaw it started in 1969.
"Flaring [in Nigeria] is the biggest source of greenhouse gas
production in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a breach of human rights and
something that is not allowed in this country," he explained.
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