US domestic oil production hit an all-time high last week, contrasting with efforts to slice heat-trapping carbon emissions by the administration of US President Joe Biden and world leaders.
And it conflicts with oft-repeated Republican talking points of a Biden “war on American energy.”
The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that US oil production in the first week of October hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing the previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels. Weekly domestic oil production has doubled from the first week in October 2012 to now.
With the UN and scientists saying the world needs to cut carbon emissions — from burning coal, oil and natural gas — by 43 percent by 2030 and down to zero or close to it by 2050, several developed countries across the world are dangerously producing more, not less, fossil fuels, experts say.
“Continuing to expand oil and gas production is hypocritical and not at all consistent with the global call to phase down fossil fuels,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, chief executive officer of Climate Analytics, which helps track global actions and policies to curb climate change. “The US support for expanded fossil fuel production will undermine global efforts to reduce emissions.”
The US is not alone in this.
Hare pointed to Norway, Australia, the UK and Canada, adding France because of support of Courbevoie-based multinational TotalEnergies.
Moreover, the designated president of upcoming climate negotiations heads the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) national oil company, which has announced plans to boost drilling.
‘CATASTROPHE’
“From ExxonMobil to Shell, Guyana to Cote d’Ivorie [Ivory Coast], those with fossil resources seek to boost production and delay action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor John Sterman, a senior adviser at Climate Interactive, an organization that models future warming based on countries’ proposed actions.
That path will lead to “catastrophe,” Sterman said.
Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who heads emissions-tallying group Global Carbon Project, said that no country or company wants to cut oil and gas production if someone else is going to sell oil anyway.
“We’re in a fossil trap,” Jackson said.
White House officials have long considered increased oil production inside the US as a bridge to help soften the transition to renewable energy sources. Officials have closely tracked domestic production, noting that output has risen by an average of more than 1 million barrels a day over the past year. It is evidence that many of the oil price increases reflect the policy choices of other countries including Saudi Arabia on what is a globally priced commodity.
The Biden administration has committed several hundred billions of dollars in government incentives for moving away from fossil fuels to limit the damage from climate change.
Just because the US is increasing oil production, that does not mean it will not phase down emissions, said Samantha Gross, director of energy security and climate at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
US oil is less carbon-intensive than other oil, an argument that the UAE’s oil company also makes, Gross said.
“So long as oil is demanded, demand drives production — we need to change the whole system to reduce oil demand,” she said.
“Replacing oil in power production is a lot easier than replacing oil in transportation,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We need changes in the transportation sector, along with policies to reduce demand for transport — like teleworking, walkable neighborhoods and good public transportation.”
The Energy Information Administration in a separate document predicted that global carbon emissions will rise, not plummet, through 2050.
‘MILLIONS DEAD’
“If the EIA is right, we’ll add another trillion tons of [carbon dioxide] pollution to the atmosphere by 2050 and millions of people will die,” Jackson said. “There’s no other way to see it.”
Republican senators and representatives, including the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, this year have repeated the phrase “Biden’s war on American energy.”
Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, last month pushed back on that.
“There are thousands of available permits — places where oil companies could drill,” Bernstein said. “They’ve been highly profitable. They’ve been highly productive. So, I don’t think that’s the problem.”
Jackson said that the Biden administration has swung back and forth on energy exploration, approving the Willow oil project in Alaska, but canceling drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“It’s clear that the Biden administration is not running a war against fossil fuels, or if it is, it’s a very unsuccessful war,” Hare said.
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