"COP28 President’s ‘hypocritical’ oil firm failing to acknowledge full extent of their carbon footprint"

The fossil fuel giant run by the president of the forthcoming UN climate summit – Sultan Al-Jaber – last month reported only a fraction of its carbon pollution, despite him saying companies need to “attack all emissions”, according to new analysis.

Taking into account emissions from burning the oil and gas it produces, Al-Jaber’s company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), produced 14 times more emissions last year than it reported.

As president of COP28, Sultan Al-Jaber is charged with shepherding nations closer towards policies that will limit global heating to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, largely through sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions....

In a first, ADNOC last month disclosed the emissions from producing its oil and gas for last year. These emissions – known as Scope 1 and 2 – amounted to 24 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2022, according to the company.

Greeting the announcement, the state-run Abu Dhabi media office heralded ADNOC’s disclosed emissions as an “industry-leading low carbon intensity achievement.”

Scope 1 and 2 emissions do not include pollution released when fossil fuels like oil and gas are burned for energy. These – known as Scope 3 – typically make up the vast majority of an oil company’s carbon footprint. Although most oil and gas majors do not traditionally track Scope 3, some such as BP and Chevron do include Scope 3 reductions in their climate targets.

Analysis of production data from Rystad Energy shows that ADNOC in 2022 produced over 650 million barrels of oil - enough to power China’s oil demand for six weeks – and over 40 billion cubic metres of gas.

Emissions from those products alone are calculated to just over 340 million tonnes of CO2 – more than the UK produces each year, and 14.1 times higher than the emissions the ADNOC disclosed this week...

“This is a classic case of hypocritical fossil fuel firms saying one thing and doing another,” said Patrick Galey, senior investigator at Global Witness. “Sultan Al-Jaber is on one hand asking companies to include all emissions in their climate strategies, while his firm is patting itself on the back for disclosing only a tiny fraction of its true climate impact....

Al-Jaber and ADNOC have been plagued by controversy since he was appointed as COP28 president in January. The company recently brought forward a planned production capacity increase from 4 million to 5 million barrels a day, prompting criticism from green groups.