Oil producers need to reduce emissions in current decade: Kerry

Oil producers with plans to boost their output capacities need to implement plans to reduce CO2 emissions over the current decade despite few current options to capture carbon, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate said July 1.

Several oil producing countries, including members of OPEC+, plan to boost their production capacities in the current decade before they become stranded assets. Saudi Arabia -- the world's biggest oil exporter -- aims to boost its production capacity by 1 million b/d to 13 million b/d, while the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. is on course to hit a 5 million b/d production capacity by 2030, up from 4 million b/d now.

"There is an incumbent responsibility on any country if it says it is going to have a new project to make sure that there are no emissions coming out of that because you cannot have policies which are adding emissions," John Kerry said in a media briefing.

"You can't do net-zero by 2050 if you don't do enough in the course of 2020 to 2030. We do not yet have the ability to completely reduce the emissions or to capture the carbon."

Kerry -- who concluded in June his second visit to the Middle East -- also backed the International Energy Agency's call for a halt to new oil and gas investments to reach the net-zero target by 2050. If the world were to slash carbon emissions to net-zero over the next 30 years, global oil supplies would need to shrink more than 8% annually, down to 24 million b/d in 2050, from pre-pandemic levels of just above 100 million b/d, the IEA said in its May 18 report.

IEA correct

"I think that the IEA is quite correct in pushing the notion that you really want to try to avoid the new ones rather than compounding the problem," said Kerry.

"It's understandable there might be one or two or three years of a transition, everybody gets that, provided there is a real plan in place for how you are going to meet the goal that the scientists have set which is reducing emissions overall within the next 10 years,"

The IEA report has drawn criticism from several oil producing countries and officials, with Saudi Arabia's Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman dubbing the IEA's net-zero roadmap a 'La La Land sequel', in reference to the Hollywood movie.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE say they are implementing measures to limit their CO2 emissions.

Although oil makes up the vast majority of Saudi Arabia's revenue, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has argued that the Gulf state is also investing in other forms of energy to forge a balance between monetizing its hydrocarbon resources and being an environmentally conscious country.

US emissions

Saudi Arabia also has joined the newly-launched Net-Zero Producers Forum alongside oil-producing heavyweights the US, Norway, Canada and Qatar to develop long-term strategies for reaching global net-zero emissions. The countries involved represent about 40% of global oil production.

The UAE -- OPEC's third biggest producer -- has pledged to lower its GHG emissions by 23.5% by 2030 in its second Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, that was submitted in December to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ADNOC says it wants to achieve its 2030 target while at the same time addressing its greenhouse emissions and carbon intensity of its oil and gas operations. The national oil producer argues that its oil and gas production is low-cost and low-carbon as it plans to reduce its GHG intensity by 25% by 2030.

In the US, rising emissions are a concern to the administration of President Joe Biden, Kerry said.

"In the United States, we have seen also our emissions go up in the last months and those of us who are trying to move this process are very concerned about it and engaged in discussions to see how we can avoid that," Kerry said.

Global energy-related CO2 emissions are on course to surge by almost 5% in 2021 to 33 billion tons, the second-largest increase in history, the IEA said April 20 in its Global Energy Review 2021.