Tag Archives: gas

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12 November 2015, Australian fossil fuel subsidies put at $5.6bn a year in new report. As Malcolm Turnbull heads to Turkey to attend this weekend’s G20 Summit in Antalya, a new international report has revealed that Australia is still subsidising fossil fuel production to the tune of a massive $A5.6 billion a year. The report, ‘Empty promises: G20 subsidies to oil, gas and coal production’, also highlights how Australian companies have received billions of dollars from other G20 governments to develop liquefied natural gas sites. And it notes that Australia also funds the industry with a further $A292 million ($US262 million) a year in public finance, as it expands fossil fuel production on multiple fronts. The findings come during a week where the Turnbull is coming under increasing pressure – domestically and internationally – to agree to a OECD proposal that would rein in export credit agency financing for new coal plant. Although the Turnbull government is being cagey about its response to the proposal, it has been widely reported that Canberra has joined with South Korea to propose a much-watered down version of the US-Japan deal. Considering the modesty of the OECD proposal – which has been years in the making and needs unanimous support to be adopted – it’s not a good start to global climate negotiations. And it’s not a good look for Australia as it heads to Turkey, and then Paris. But of course, Australia is not the only offender. According to the new report – put together by the UK-based Overseas Development Institute and USA-based Oil Change International – governments from the Group of 20 nations are propping up fossil fuel production with $US452 billion a year. This is almost four times the entire global subsidies for renewable energy ($US121 billion). And it is despite pledges to phase out fossil fuels – and subsidies to the industry – as one of the key measures to prevent catastrophic climate change. Read More here

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11 November 2015, Other Words, Who Can Follow This Climate Leader? President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline while backing increased oil, gas, and coal production. Remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy hits a fork in the Yellow Brick Road? As she stands there stumped, a friendly character who will accompany her to the Emerald Palace pipes up. “Pardon me, that way is a very nice way,” the Scarecrow advises as he points in one direction. “It’s pleasant down that way too,” he adds, now pointing in the other. Then the Scarecrow crosses his straw-stuffed arms and unhelpfully declares, “Of course people do go both ways.” President Barack Obama’s climate leadership is as hard to follow as the Scarecrow’s directions. After seven years of waffling, Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, this conduit would have moved more than 800,000 barrels a day of filthy oil mined from the Canadian tar sands through Nebraska and five other states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Rejecting the $8 billion pipeline early in his first term would have been bold. But Obama dallied. He only stopped it once the thing made no financial sense because of low oil prices and similar infrastructure that rendered the project unnecessary. Making this move now, on the eve of global climate talks in Paris, was merely expedient. He made his choice sound like a bigger deal than it was anyway. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” he asserted. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” So, what’s the state of that leadership? On the one hand, the Obama administration has taken steps to reduce the nation’s reliance on oil, gas, and coal. Its Clean Power Plan will step up the ongoing retirement of coal-fired power plants as it cuts carbon pollution. The federal government is also phasing in higher fuel-efficiency standards while throwing some weight behind renewable-energy initiatives. All the while, this White House has also leased a growing amount of federal land to coal-mining companies and encouraged the nation’s spiking oil and natural gas production. Obama’s inherently contradictory “all-of-the-above” energy policy supports the dangerous practice of hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — that pumps vast amounts of toxic chemicals underground, imperiling drinking water. Read More here

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20 August 2015, The Guardian, BP lobbied against EU support for clean energy to favour gas, documents reveal. BP was part of oil and gas lobby that successfully undermined EU renewable energy targets and subsidies in favour of gas as a climate fix in 2011. The fossil fuel giant BP helped spur a concerted industry push to curb EU policy support for renewable energies such as wind and solar in favour of gas, the Guardian has learned. The European commission last year outlawed most subsidies for clean energy from 2017, and ended nationally-binding renewable targets after 2020, despite opposition from environmentalists and clean energy firms. The policy decisions were however requested by BP, Shell, Statoil and Total, and by trade associations representing a plethora of oil and gas majors. “It is clear that the fossil fuel companies worked strongly together to get rid of the binding renewable targets and ensure there would be no binding efficiency targets either,” Wendel Trio, the director of Climate Action Network Europe told the Guardian. In October 2011, the Dutch oil and gas firm Shell first proposed that a sole greenhouse gas target take the place of policies that also supported renewables. Shell argued this would allow gas to cut coal-fired emissions, using the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) as a policy lever. Papers obtained by the Guardian in an access to documents request show that just four weeks later, BP also asked Barroso to discuss a similar idea with Jean-François Cirelli, the president of its Eurogas trade association. Read more here

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8 June 2015 Energy Post, Going for gas: the risky strategy of the world’s largest companies: They are the biggest companies in the world and they are making a huge bet: they are staking their – and our – future on natural gas. At the World Gas Conference in Paris, the major oil companies all avowed their belief that gas will be the world’s “fuel of choice”, because it is “the cleanest fossil fuel”, “abundant” and “competitive”. But Karel Beckman argues they are overstating the case for gas. And may even be betting on the wrong horse. “The question before us today defines our industry and perhaps our society in the 21st Century.” The “question” that Robert Franklin, President of Exxon Mobil’s Gas and Power Marketing Company, was referring to, during a panel debate at the World Gas Conference in Paris (1-5 June), was that of “how to meet the world’s energy demand while reducing the risk of climate change”. The answer to both sides of this question, he said, increasingly was: natural gas. Franklin was not alone. At the 26th edition of their triennial global gathering, the gas industry made it abundantly clear that they believe gas is the foremost solution to the world’s energy problems. One CEO after the other sang the praises of what Gazprom lovingly calls the “blue fuel”. Read More here