Big Oil Lobbied UK Government to Promote Gas at Upcoming Climate Talks

Oil majors tried to persuade the UK authorities to current pure gasoline as a “necessary compromise” to succeed in the targets of the Paris Agreement at essential worldwide local weather talks later this 12 months, new paperwork present.

The paperwork have been first reported by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative arm. Last week, Channel 4 launched bombshell footage obtained by the group throughout an undercover investigation of a lobbyist for Exxon making all types of untamed claims about how the corporate cozies as much as politicians in Washington, DC. Here, Unearthed is following up these tapes with a preview of how the business is making an attempt to sway people overseas forward of the COP26 local weather talks, that are being held in Glasgow and hosted by the UK in November.

Conor Burns, then a commerce minister for the UK, traveled to Texas in February 2020, the place he met with representatives of BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, and Equinor for dinner to speak concerning the nation’s management function within the upcoming COP26 conferences. According to notes from that dinner obtained by Unearthed by way of the UK’s freedom of knowledge legal guidelines, the oil representatives pressured Burns to place pure gasoline as a “compromise” on the Glasgow talks.

“There needs to be greater recognition of the role of gas in transition, it is cleaner than coal and fundamental to the Texas economy,” the notes learn. “Moving the US and the developing world from coal to gas is a necessary compromise, while they make inroads in affordability of genuinely clean energy.”

Calling gasoline “cleaner than coal” isn’t precisely a excessive praise on condition that coal is likely one of the most carbon-intensive types of power on Earth. Positioning gasoline as a “necessary compromise” conveniently doesn’t have in mind how setting up new gasoline infrastructure will lock the U.S. and different nations into fossil gas use for many years, effectively previous the date once we will must be not utilizing that stuff anymore. Nor does it account for the truth that the prices of renewables are quickly falling, and at the moment are cheaper than building new gas facilities in common. Oh, and gasoline can also be a main supply of methane emissions, a greenhouse gasoline that’s 80 instances stronger than carbon dioxide. It’s hardly the stuff of compromise when there are cheaper, carbon-free types of power era on the market. (Maybe the truth that all these corporations have monumental investments in pure gasoline fields in Texas that dwarf many of their current investments in solar and wind may have one thing to do with this line of thought. Just a guess.)

The notes from the dinner have been drafted into an official memo for the UK authorities by Richard Hyde, who is predicated in Houston and represents the UK as Consul General for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Hyde’s notes learn like a web page torn out of Big Oil’s playbook more and more used to persuade the world that they’re all aboard preventing local weather change—if they will solely simply maintain producing fossil fuels for us to make use of, that’s.

“These companies told you they want to work with the UK, including during our leadership of COP26,” Hyde wrote. “They need support from governments like ours so they can be seen as a vital part of the solution to future energy provision. They want transition without decimating our economies or stunting the growth of emerging economies. The public need to be given realistic expectations on the transition process; energy projects have long lead in times. … It is too easy to demonise the industry, but this will not help resolve the problem; though all [the oil companies present at the dinner] admitted they had to be better at telling their story.”

In statements made to Channel 4, which reported on the Unearthed investigation, representatives from all of the oil majors on the dinner affirmed that they supported the Paris Agreement’s targets (although assembly these targets means stopping all oil and gasoline exploration by subsequent 12 months, one thing that none of these corporations have indicated they may do). A spokesperson for the UK authorities instructed Channel 4, in the meantime, that the dinner was a “routine engagement with the energy industry” that additionally mentioned the oil majors’ transition to renewable power, “not lobbied.”

Given how exhausting the oil and gasoline business has labored to make itself seen within the UK upfront of the COP, it’s questionable whether or not the strict definition of “lobbying” is de facto relevant right here. From a tar sands government being named as a “climate champion” by the UK authorities to paperwork revealing that oil and gasoline corporations lobbied to sponsor parts of the upcoming talks to Shell sponsoring a big science exhibit within the UK at one in every of its public museums this spring, it’s clear that the business is making an attempt many various techniques to push its agenda ahead. It stays to be seen if all that affect may have any sway on the precise conferences in a few months.