Baku, Azerbaijan, Sep.6
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Norway’s Equinor acknowledges the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) scientific consensus of the influence human activities have on inducing climate change, the company told Trend in response to the question how the company’s projects help support the Paris Agreement.
“Equinor aims to be a part of a global energy transformation and continue to turn natural resources into energy for people and progress for society,” said the company.
The Carbon Tracker Initiative said in its latest report that the oil and gas projects that have already been sanctioned will take the world past 1.5ºC, assuming carbon capture and storage remains subscale.
“Despite increased investor pressure on climate issues, we find that projects are still being sanctioned which don’t fit into a cost-optimised Paris-aligned scenario. All of the majors sanctioned such projects last year, including the European majors that are making the greatest moves to reassure investors that they are consistent with the energy transition – Shell, BP, Total and Equinor,” said the report.
“We estimate that for each of Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Total, Equinor, Shell, Eni and BP, at least c.30 percent of their 2018 upstream capex was on projects that would not fit inside a B2DS budget based on a supply cost basis.”
Carbon Tracker analysts said that last year, all of the major oil companies sanctioned projects that fall outside a “well below 2 degrees” budget on cost grounds.
“These will not deliver adequate returns in a lowcarbon world. Examples include Shell’s $13bn LNG Canada project and BP, Total, ExxonMobil and Equinor’s Zinia 2 project in Angola. We highlight $50bn of recently sanctioned projects across the oil and gas industry that fail the Paris alignment test by a margin.”
Equinor said its strategy focuses on three main areas. “We are building a high value and low carbon oil and gas portfolio, we are building a material industrial position in renewable energy and low carbon solutions, and we embed climate risk and performance into our decision-making.”
“Our climate roadmap explains how we plan to achieve our goals and how we will develop our business, in support of the ambitions set out in the Paris climate agreement. Some examples of action are: By 2020 we expect up to 25 percent of research funds to be devoted to new energy solutions & energy efficiency; We are aiming to achieve annual CO2 emission reductions of 3 million tonnes by 2030 compared to 2017; By 2030 new energy has the potential to constitute around 15-20 percent of Equinor’s investments/annual capex.”
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