An updated database shows that more than 1,000 oil and gas companies around the world are planning to expand their planet-wrecking infrastructure.
More than a thousand fossil fuel companies around the world are currently planning to build new liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines, or gas-fired power plants even as scientists warn that fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with efforts to prevent catastrophic warming.
That’s according to an updated database released Wednesday by Urgewald and dozens of partner groups. Described as the most comprehensive public database on the fossil fuel industry, the Global Oil & Gas Exit List (GOGEL) covers 1,623 companies that are operating in the upstream, midstream, or gas-fired power sector and collectively account for 95% of global oil and gas production.
More than a thousand fossil fuel companies around the world are currently planning to build new liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines, or gas-fired power plants even as scientists warn that fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with efforts to prevent catastrophic warming.
That’s according to an updated database released Wednesday by Urgewald and dozens of partner groups. Described as the most comprehensive public database on the fossil fuel industry, the Global Oil & Gas Exit List (GOGEL) covers 1,623 companies that are operating in the upstream, midstream, or gas-fired power sector and collectively account for 95% of global oil and gas production.
JUST RELEASED The Global Oil & Gas Exit List (GOGEL) with fresh numbers: Despite the climate crisis, almost every upstream company is still developing new oil&gas fields. In addition, 1,023 companies planning new LNG terminals, pipelines, gas power plants. https://t.co/DsBgFMR7QZpic.twitter.com/BCUGpd5PYJ
According to the 2023 GOGEL, 96% of the 700 upstream oil and gas companies in the database are exploring or actively developing new oil and gas fields, projects that Urgewald said “severely jeopardize efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 °C.”
Nearly 540 companies in the database are collectively planning to produce 230 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) over the short term, the database shows.
“The seven companies with the largest short-term expansion plans are Saudi Aramco (16.8 bboe), QatarEnergy (16.5 bboe), Gazprom (10.7 bboe), Petrobras (9.6 bboe), ADNOC (9.0 bboe), TotalEnergies (8.0 bboe) and ExxonMobil (7.9 bboe),” Urgewald noted. “These seven companies are responsible for one-third of global short-term oil and gas expansion.”
The database also shows that fossil fuel companies are planning to expand global LNG capacity by 162%, a significant threat to critical climate targets. A United Nations-backed report published last week warned that fossil fuel expansion plans are “throwing humanity’s future into question.”
Urgewald pointed specifically to the LNG boom in the U.S., which the group said is “cementing its position as the world’s largest export hub for LNG” with 21 new export facilities planned along the Gulf Coast. Those facilities account for more than 40% of worldwide LNG expansion documented in the GOGEL database.
“Most of the fossil gas that will be exported from these terminals stems from the Permian Basin, the heart of the U.S. fracking industry,” Urgewald observed.
The updated database shows that nearly 80 companies—including Exxon, Chevron, and BP—are currently operating in the Permian Basin, located in the U.S. Southwest.
Climate campaigners and experts have also sounded alarm over Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), a planned $10 billion LNG export hub that would ship up to 24 million tons of gas annually once it is completed.
“The fossil fuel industry wants to pave undeveloped wetlands all along the coast with LNG facilities like NextDecade Corporation’s Rio Grande LNG Terminal, Rebekah Hinojosa, a member of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network said Wednesday. “Besides their environmental implications, these plans violate Indigenous sacred lands, and people working in fishing, shrimping, and eco-tourism risk losing their jobs. Our communities refuse to be sacrificed for the fracking industry’s dirty gas exports.”
One of the many occasions UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.
Political leaders owe their citizens the truth about the costs and the challenges of the energy transition on a warming planet. Last week, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak failed – and California Governor Gavin Newsom passed – that test.
…
If Sunak had mustered the courage to tell Brits the truth, rather than throwing up flack about excessive costs and burdens, he could have taken a cue from Newsom and said this instead: “The cost-of-living crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. Inflation persists. It’s not complicated. It’s not complicated. It’s the burning of oil. It’s the burning of gas. It’s the burning of coal – and we need to call that out.”
“The rise in energy prices started last winter, when many countries experienced low gas stocks, leading to a rise in gas prices. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and volatile market conditions led to further price hikes,” wrote van Halm. European gas prices peaked in August 2022 at more than €300 per megawatt-hour (/MWh), she noted, when before the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European gas prices were regularly around €10–20/MWh.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Boris Johnson confirms his thumbs up from Rupert Murdoch
Our investigation reveals secretive funding sources for think tanks that boast of influencing the government
Influential right-wing UK think tanks with close access to ministers have received millions in ‘dark money’ donations from the US, openDemocracy can reveal.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute and the Legatum Institute have raised $9m from American donors since 2012. Of this, at least $6m has been channelled to the UK, according to tax returns filed with US authorities – representing 11% of the think tanks’ total UK receipts, with the figure reaching 23% for the Adam Smith Institute.
In that time, all five have steadily increased their connections in the heart of government. Between them, they have secured more than 100 meetings with ministers and more than a dozen of their former staff have joined Boris Johnson’s government as special advisers.
Representatives from right-wing think tanks – many of whom are headquartered at 55 Tufton Street in central London – frequently appear in British media and have been credited with pushing the Tories further to the right on Brexit and the economy.
As openDemocracy revealed yesterday, ExxonMobil gave Policy Exchange $30,000 in 2017. The think tank went on to recommend the creation of a new anti-protest law targeting the likes of Extinction Rebellion, which became the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
None of these think tanks disclose their UK donors. With the exception of the Adam Smith Institute, none provide any information about the identity of donors to their US fundraising arms.
But an investigation by openDemocracy has identified dozens of the groups’ US funders by analysing more than 100 publicly available tax filings.
The Scottish National Party MP Alyn Smith said that the findings showed that the UK’s lobbying laws were not tough enough.
“He who pays the piper calls the tune,” he told openDemocracy. “We urgently need to rewrite the laws governing this sort of sock puppet funding so that we can see who speaks for who.”
Last month, Smith asked an IEA representative who funded the think tank on BBC’s flagship question time show.
Among the US-organisations who have donated to UK think tanks are oil companies and several of the top funders of climate change denial in the US.
The think tanks’ US arms received $5.4m from 18 donors who have also separately donated a combined $584m towards a vast network of organisations promoting climate denial in the US between 2003 to 2018, according to research from climate scientists.
The John Templeton Foundation, founded by the late billionaire American-British investor, has donated almost $2m to the US arms of the Adam Smith Institute and the IEA. Researchers claim that the John Templeton Foundation has a “history of funding what could be seen as anti-science activities and groups (particularly concerning climate-change and stem-cell research)”.
The National Philanthropic Trust, a multi-billion-dollar fund that does not disclose its own donors, has given almost $2m to the IEA, Policy Exchange, TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Legatum Institute’s US fundraisers. The trust has donated $22m to climate denial organisations, one of which described it as a “vehicle” for funnelling anonymous donations from the fossil fuel industry.
The Sarah Scaife Foundation, founded by the billionaire heir to an oil and banking fortune, has given $350,000 to the Adam Smith Institute and the Legatum Institute. The foundation is one of the biggest funders of climate denial in the US, contributing more than $120m to 50 organisations promoting climate denial since 2012. Last month, openDemocracy revealed that the foundation, which has $30m in shares in fossil fuel companies, gave $210,525 to a UK climate sceptic group.
Policy Exchange, the influential conservative think tank, published a report in 2019 – two years after taking money from ExxonMobil – claiming that Extinction Rebellion were “extremists” and calling for the government to introduce new laws to crack down on the climate protest group.
New anti-protest laws passed under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act last month appear to have been directly inspired by the report. The Home Office did not deny that it considered the recommendations when approached for comment.
The American Friends of the IEA also received a $50,000 donation from ExxonMobil in 2004, while the main UK branch of the IEA has received donations from BP every year since 1967.
The Legatum Institute has received $154,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2018 and 2019. The foundation was set up by the American billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, one the biggest fossil fuel companies in the US.
Andy Rowell, co-author of “A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain”, told openDemocracy: “For years, there have been calls for think tanks, who are so often joined at the hip with government, to be transparent and disclose who funds them.
“The fact that so much dark money is behind these groups, and much of it is linked to climate denial groups, is a political scandal that can’t be allowed to continue, especially given our climate emergency.”
In all, US donors account for more than a tenth of the overall income of the IEA, Policy Exchange, Adam Smith Institute and TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Anti-green lobbying
While all the think tanks say they do not dispute the science on climate change, many are campaigning to increase the UK’s dependency on fossil fuels and deregulate energy markets in response to the cost of living crisis.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, Adam Smith Institute and the IEA have all called for the UK’s ban on fracking to be overturned. In April, the government agreed to review the moratorium it had imposed in 2019, when scientists deemed fracking unsafe. The U-turn came after concerted pressure from anti-net zero Tory MPs and lobby groups.
The IEA has also called for the government to approve the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, while the TaxPayers’ Alliance has called for the government to scrap green energy bill levies. Tory MP Ben Bradley has cited the TaxPayers’ Alliance in Parliament while claiming that levies will exacerbate the cost of living crisis.
Environmental groups say cutting the levies, which are used to invest in energy efficiency measures and renewable energy, would be self-defeating and merely delay the UK’s longer-term transition away from fossil fuels.
Johnson’s think tank cabinet
Right-wing think tanks like the IEA have come to play an increasingly influential role in shaping British politics, despite the lack of transparency around their funding.
The IEA has boasted that 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet – including the home secretary Priti Patel, the foreign secretary Liz Truss and the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, are “alumni of IEA initiatives”.
Ministers have recorded 26 meetings with the think tank since 2012, but there may be additional, undeclared private meetings. In 2020, Truss, who was then the secretary of state for trade, failed to declare two meetings with the IEA, arguing that they were made in a personal capacity.
Mark Littlewood, the director of the IEA, has boasted of securing access to ministers and MPs for his corporate clients, including BP, telling an undercover reporter in 2018 that he was in “the Brexit influencing game”.
Others like Policy Exchange, which was co-founded by the ‘levelling up’ secretary Michael Gove, can claim to have had some of their policy ideas taken up by the government.
Gove’s recently announced plan to allow residents to vote on whether to allow developments on their street was first proposed by Policy Exchange last year. Campaigners said the plan will not help increase the supply of affordable housing.
Several of the think tanks were accused by a whistleblower of coordinating with one another to advocate for a hard break from the European Union following the referendum vote.
Shamir Sanni, a former pro-Brexit campaigner who worked for TaxPayers’ Alliance before going public with his claims, alleged that the organisation regularly met with the IEA, the Adam Smith Institute to agree on a common line on issues relating to Brexit.
Sanni subsequently won an unfair dismissal case against the TaxPayers’ Alliance. The organisations he identified have all denied they act as lobbyists or coordinate.
New survey results from 40 countries shows that climate change matters to most people. In the vast majority of countries, fewer than 3% said climate change was not serious at all.
We carried out this research as part of the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute annual Digital News Reports. More than 80,000 people were surveyed online in January and February of this year.
Almost seven in ten think climate change is “a very, or extremely serious, problem”, but the results show notable country differences. Lack of concern is far higher in the US (12%) as well as in Sweden (9%), Greta Thunberg’s home country. Despite disastrous bush fires at the time of our fieldwork, 8% of respondents in Australia report that climate change is not serious at all. These groups with low levels of concern tend to be right wing and older.
Four of the five countries showing the highest levels of concern (85-90%) were from the global south, namely Chile, Kenya, South Africa and the Philippines. However, in countries with lower levels of internet penetration, our online survey samples over-represent people who are more affluent and educated.
Almost everyone in Chile and Kenya thinks climate change is serious. But that’s not the case in Scandinavia and the Low Countries. Reuters Institute Digital News Report, Author provided
Perhaps surprisingly, the five countries with the lowest levels of concern are all in Western Europe. In Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, only around half (or less) think that climate change is a serious problem.
It is the first time that results from survey questions on climate change have been included in the Reuters Institute’s reports, so it is difficult to draw out historical trends. However, results in 2015 from the Pew Center based on surveys in 40 countries (with different questions and countries to those in our survey) found that 54% of those surveyed thought that climate change was “a very serious” problem.
In the UK, data from the CAST centre at Cardiff University showed that in 2019 levels of “worry” about climate change were at their highest recorded point. Extreme weather events, media reporting and wider publicity were mentioned by respondents as reasons for their increase in concern.
In our survey, across countries and markets, individuals who identify as left-wing tend to report higher levels of concern. This finding is even more visible in more polarised societies such as the US where 89% of those who self-identify on the left note that climate change is serious, compared to only 18% of those who self-identify on the right.
Right-wingers tend to take climate change less seriously – especially in the US and Sweden. Reuters Institute Digital News Report, Author provided
We also find a similar divide in Sweden. As Sweden is widely considered one of the world’s most progressive nations, these results surprised us and we asked Martin Hultman, a researcher in climate denialism at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, what to make of them.
“These figures do not surprise me”, he told us in an email. “Since 2010, the leadership of the far-right political party Sweden Democrats has been against all types of policies to tackle climate change, including the Paris Agreement.”
“And we know that the spread of climate change denial ideas and rhetoric is widespread in Sweden – not least when digitally-born far-right media sites spread conspiracy theories about Greta Thunberg.”
TV news still dominates
Across all countries, people say they pay most attention to climate news on television (35%). Online news sites of major news organisations are the second most popular news source (15%), followed by specialised outlets covering climate issues (13%), then alternative sources such as social media and blogs (9%).
Figures from the UK, US and Australia are broadly in line with these preferences. Printed newspapers and radio are way down, with only around 5% saying each was the source they paid most attention to. In Chile, where the concern is high, specialised outlets covering climate issues (24%) as well as alternative sources such as social media (17%) are nearly as popular as television (26%).
The differences in climate news consumption are also visible among different age groups. Younger generations, more specifically the so-called Generation Z (aged 18-24), are more likely to report paying attention to alternative sources on climate change (17%) as well as TV (23%) and online news sites from major news organisations (16%). Older people, however, rely more heavily on TV (42%) and use less of the online news sites (12%) or alternative sources such as social media (5%).
Respondents from both sides of the political spectrum criticise the media for either being too doom-laden, or not bold enough, in their coverage of climate change. That said, our survey shows that almost half of our respondents (47%) think that news media generally do a good job of informing them about climate change, and 19% think that they do a bad job.
However, those who have low levels of concern are much more inclined to say that the news media are doing a bad job (46%). This might indicate a lack of trust in climate change coverage or a more general loss of confidence in the news media.
