- Analysis shows bare minimum liability for polluting planet for profit
- Big Oil’s historic liability tops $1 trillion; enough to cover a decade of Loss and Damage
- Bare minimum owed for 50 years’ pollution less than Big Five’s profits since 2022
London (25 September, 2024): A retrospective climate tax on the 30 biggest oil and gas companies could raise over $1 trillion towards the UN’s loss & damage fund, with potential to raise $300 billion from the Big 5 Western oil majors alone, according to new Global Witness analysis.
In the 50 years since leading producers privately acknowledged that their oil and gas was contributing to global heating, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies (the Big 5) have collectively polluted the atmosphere to the tune of 60 billion tonnes of CO2 – the effects of which are contributing to unprecedented heatwaves, devastating flooding, and withering droughts the world over.
In response, a movement of campaigners, researchers and government officials formed a Climate Damages Tax (CDT) coalition, which has designed a tax system for the fossil fuel industry, based on each tonne of coal, oil or gas they extract.
Forward-looking studies have shown CDT would raise billions for countries devastated by climate change, and to help pay for the transition to green energy, transport and jobs.
But these studies haven’t looked back at the pollution already caused by Big Oil’s extraction. Using the base Climate Damages Tax rate of $5 per tonne of CO2 emitted, Global Witness calculates that the pollution already caused by the Big 5 merits a bare minimum liability of $294 billion in today’s money.
Patrick Galey, senior fossil fuels investigator for Global Witness, said:
“Big Oil has been allowed to pollute and profit without consequence, ruining millions of lives and livelihoods around the world.
But the tides are turning. We have the receipts; we know exactly who is responsible for climate collapse. This is a call for those responsible to pay the bare minimum in damages. We know they can afford it; in the last two years alone they’ve trousered more than $280 billion in pure profit.”
Global Witness analysed the oil and gas production of the top 30 most polluting companies over the past half century. With the cost of climate Loss and Damage expected to exceed $390 billion in 2025 alone, we propose that these producers pay for what they have polluted.
The total amount owed is over $1.22 trillion. This could fund the UN-audited Loss and Damage Fund for the next 12 years.
Based on their emissions over the past 50 years, the five largest oil and gas contributors to the CDT would be: Saudi Aramco ($327 billion owed), Kuwait Petroleum Corp ($81.5 billion), ExxonMobil ($78 billion), Chevron ($71.5 billion), and Shell ($56.5 billion).
Under a base-rate climate damages tax on their emissions since 1975, BP would owe some $54 billion and TotalEnergies $34 billion.
Methodology:
- The Climate Damages Tax (CDT) is a joint initiative from European environmental groups that seeks to rectify the historic injustice inflicted on climate vulnerable communities by the fossil fuel industry. Its full methodology is available here
- Global Witness applied a base rate of $5 per tonne of CO2 on the emissions of the top 30 oil and gas producers over that last 50 years. The amount is demonstrative and has not been adjusted for inflation
- The data on companies operated oil production for 1975-2024 were sourced from energy business intelligence agency Rystad Energy’s UCube database. UCube is an integrated field-by-field database of the global upstream oil and gas market, covering the time span from 1900 to 2100. Rystad’s data is widely referenced by major oil and gas companies, the media and international bodies such as the IEA.
- UCube takes into account oil and gas demand to project asset-level supply. Projections are based on data sources including company reporting (e.g., earnings and profits reporting) and policies, government sources, energy service reporting, energy agencies and academic research and news articles. Where reported data is unavailable, data is modelled based on the above sources and supported by a comprehensive database of global oil and gas fields.
- Data source from UCube assumes a “mean” warming scenario of 1.9C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures, where global oil demand peaks at 107 million bpd by 2026 and declines progressively to 66 million bpd by 2050. It also assumes a CCUS capacity of 600 million tonnes/year globally by 2030
- We sourced the data of operated production from 1975-2024 The data includes all assets that are currently producing, those under development (assets for which development has been approved but production has not yet started), discovery (assets where discoveries have been made, but are not yet in a phase of further development) and undiscovered (assets where discoveries have not yet been made)
- The data on oil covers only crude oil and gas. We did not include figures NGL and condensate, making these conservative production estimates
- We based our emissions calculations on values taken from the UK Government Conversion of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting, available here