If all the new oil and gas deposits discovered this year were put into production, in 2040 we would extract twice as many hydrocarbons as we can afford to stay below the 1.5 degree threshold
The analysis of the IISD on Rystad data: Exploration of new fossil deposits returned to pre-Covid levels
While last year’s COP28 affirmed global commitment to a “transition from fossil fuels,” oil and gas companies invested more than $26 billion in the first six months of 2024 to explore new fossil deposits. So back to pre-Covid levels. And among the most active countries are the major Western economies – such as the United States, Canada, Norway, Australia, Great Britain – which should be at the forefront in respecting the outcome of the international summit.
Volumes reached in the first half of this year are alarming, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which is based on industrial data collected by Rystad. Alarming both in absolute terms and analyzing the trend of recent years. The resources identified this year are much bigger than those discovered since 2020. If fully exploited, they alone would release something like 12 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s more than all four previous years combined. The data concerns all new fossil deposits that have obtained a licence this year, until June, and the deposits for which auction procedures are opened, planned or announced.
The contribution of these new fossil resources to global warming could be decisive in putting the world completely off track from the 1.5 degree target. Extracting all the oil and gas from these new fossil deposits, in fact, would lead to a volume of hydrocarbons extracted twice as much by 2040 as compatible with the more ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement. And this year the “production gap”, that is, the gap between how many fossils are extracted and how many can be extracted in accordance with Paris, has grown at the highest rate since 2015.
Who is behind this acceleration? The major Western world economies. The United States, Canada, Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom have issued most licences (two-thirds of the total) from 2020 to today. In the second half of the year, the IISD predicts, it will be China, Mexico (which from October 1 will be under the new presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist) and Russia to issue the most licences.
“Eliminating oil and gas licences is a logical next step in the transition to clean energy,” comments Olivier Bois von Kursk of the IISD. “Governments must put the COP 28 agreement into practice, especially those with the economic resources to drive investment in more sustainable sectors.”
