Oil and Industry Archives

The oil price has reached its highest point since it plummeted in March due to COVID-19 lockdowns, as market confidence grows in coronavirus vaccines.

Sixty-two major oil and gas companies on Monday (23 November) agreed to a new framework for monitoring, reporting and reducing methane emissions as part of the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to move the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars forward to 2030, as part of a raft of new policy announcements to drive the UK towards its net-zero target. EURACTIV's media partner edie.net reports.

The Norwegian government has announced plans to ban heavy fuel oil (HFO), a dirty marine fuel that propels most vessels, around its Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The effort comes as UN efforts have been deemed too slow.

Emissions from the global energy sector will be 7-8% lower in 2020 than in 2019, but most nations are still failing to align their energy generation and consumption patterns with long-term climate targets, Capgemini is warning. EURACTIV's media partner, edie.net, reports.

COVID-19 has had a wide-ranging impact on oil and gas, with estimates showing that oil demand could peak as early as 2025, rather than 2040, and that gas will be a much shorter bridge into renewables, writes Simon Redmond and Elena Anankina.

MEPs should uphold the Green Deal and vote against subsidising gas in the upcoming Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs vote, writes Jeremy Wates and Magda Stoczkiewicz.

After decades spent extracting fossil fuels from the UK’s North Sea, a consortium of oil companies is preparing to pump Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions back beneath the seabed to help meet the government’s climate ambitions. EURACTIV's media partner partner, The Guardian, reports.

None of the world's major coal, oil and and gas companies are on track to limit climate warming to 2°C by 2050, according to new research released on Wednesday (7 October).

Governments and companies have the chance today to turn carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) into a clean energy success story that will bring environmental and economic benefits worldwide. Without it, our energy and climate goals will become almost impossible to reach, write Erna Solberg and Fatih Birol.

The term “chemical recycling” should only be used for plastic waste reconverted into new plastics. If those plastics are transformed into fuels or petrochemical products, the process should be called “recovery” instead, write Shanar Tabrizi and Fanny Rateau.

Norway will finance two-thirds of a large-scale project to capture and store carbon dioxide – its second attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a plan that was previously touted as the oil-producing country's moon landing.

The European Commission reduced on Monday (21 September) the number of industrial sectors eligible for compensation against higher electricity costs caused by the EU carbon market, the Emissions Trading Scheme.

PKN Orlen, Poland's largest oil refiner and retailer, this week became the first oil company in central Europe to commit to climate neutrality by 2050, with plans to invest billions in energy efficiency, solar, wind, and hydrogen.

Big oil producers are pinning their future growth on the world's insatiable appetite for plastic, researchers said Friday (4 September), in a "bet" on society's failure to tackle disposable consumption that risks stranding billions of dollars in petrochemical investments.

The spectacular collapse in oil prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic has brought the costliest – and most polluting – oil projects such as tar sands to a standstill, a development some analysts say could be definitive.

A group of the world's top oil companies including Saudi Aramco, China's CNPC and ExxonMobil have for the first time set targets to cut their combined greenhouse gas emissions as a proportion of production, as pressure on the sector's climate stance grows.

Volkswagen is set to remove production lines for all internal combustion engine vehicles from one of its key factories this year, replacing them with electric vehicle production capacity. EURACTIV's media partner, edie.net, reports.

Oil companies are being forced to cut spending due to a fall in global oil prices, threatening funds earmarked to dismantle dated off-shore rigs, despite environmental risks.

US-based oil and gas majors are lagging well behind their European counterparts when it comes to plans for cutting emissions to comply with the Paris climate deal, according to analysis released Wednesday (24 June).

The European oil refining industry association, whose members includes Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Total, outlined on Monday (15 June) a €650 billion plan to completely decarbonise transport fuels by 2050.

Business in oil, gas and coal is becoming increasingly unprofitable as global fossil reserves could lose around two-thirds of their value in the next 50 years, plummeting from around $39 trillion to $14 trillion, according to a study published on Thursday (4 May) by British think tank Carbon Tracker. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Oil and gas companies throughout the supply chain need to do much more to bring down methane emissions immediately. And they can, writes Maarten Wetselaar.

While fossil fuel projects are in theory excluded from EU funding, natural gas will continue to play a key role in replacing coal while helping to build a hydrogen infrastructure at least cost, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said on Thursday (28 May).