Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) member companies stepped up low-carbon investment in 2022 to US$24.3bn, up 66% compared with the previous year, according to the group’s annual Progress Report
Renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar accounted for the largest share of low-carbon investment, while spending on carbon capture, utilisation and storage tripled since 2021.
The OGCI member companies, 12 of the largest oil and gas companies worldwide, increased activities to help other companies decarbonise while continuing to reduce emissions from operations to meet their target of net zero operations. They have collectively halved absolute upstream methane emissions and cut carbon intensity by over a fifth compared with the 2017 baseline.
Progress came as OGCI increased its efforts to reduce methane emissions across the oil and gas industry by extending its Satellite Monitoring Campaign to more countries. The campaign has been successfully running in Iraq, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Egypt. Support for the Aiming for Zero Methane Emissions Initiative, launched in 2022 to reach near zero methane emissions by 2030, now numbers over 90 companies, including private and state-run oil companies, service firms, technology providers and consultancies.
In 2022, OGCI also expanded work to support the development of industrial hubs where carbon dioxide is captured and stored and set out pathways to help decarbonize the refining sector, which emits around 1 gigatonne of CO2 a year. OGCI member companies are actively involved in developing 40 large-scale CCUS hubs around the world, which have the potential to remove up to 300 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030.
OGCI executive committee chair Bjørn Otto Sverdrup said, “As we approach OGCI’s 10-year anniversary, we can see that we have made some good progress, showing that working together can achieve results in decarbonising our industry. But we recognise that there’s more to do.
“To tackle the climate challenge, we must accelerate action across our industry and other sectors. As we head into COP, we see major opportunities for collective action on methane emissions and industry-wide efforts to reduce emissions from operations. Technologies such as carbon capture will also be vital to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.”
OGCI members are Aramco, bp, Chevron, CNPC, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Occidental, Petrobras, Repsol, Shell and TotalEnergies, which together represent almost 30% of global oil and gas production.
