The French major TotalEnergies participates in 33 gas and oil projects that are “super-emitting” greenhouse gases, accuses the NGO Greenpeace on Wednesday in a study aimed at demonstrating a “logic of fossil expansion” in contradiction with the objectives climatic.
According to Greenpeace, “in 2022, TotalEnergies was involved, as an operator or as a shareholder, in 33 “super-emitting” fossil fuel projects”, that is to say, in the eyes of the NGOs, those which are likely to emit at least 1 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) each.
“Climate bombs”
“Catastrophic for the climate”, these projects also described as “climate bombs” “endanger” the most ambitious objective of the Paris agreement in 2015 to limit global warming to +1.5°C per year. compared to the pre-industrial era, denounces Greenpeace.
If the reserves still contained in these projects at the end of 2022 were actually extracted and burned, they could produce 93 billion tonnes of CO2e, covering “upstream” emissions (transport, extraction, transformation) and those linked to gas and oil consumed by the end user.
Over time, they would represent the equivalent of one and a half times annual global emissions, estimated in 2019 at around 60 billion tonnes of CO2e, according to the IPCC.
A shale gas extraction project, “the most emitting”
To arrive at its “estimated calculations”, Greenpeace converted the volumes of reserves into emissions potential by using an Ademe database in particular. Based on data from the research firm Rystad Energy as of April 2023, Greenpeace selected projects in which TotalEnergies is involved in at least one asset – a project that can bring together several assets, or fields, and involve several operating companies and/or shareholders. .
These projects are located in 14 countries and 19 are “less than 50 km from a protected biodiversity area”, according to the NGO. “The most emitting”, according to Greenpeace, is the Vaca Muerta shale gas extraction project in Argentina, followed by two projects in Qatar.
Others are recorded in the United States, Brazil, Australia, Mozambique and also in Russia, in the immense Artic LNG2 liquefied gas field: the group is still a 10% shareholder even if it has announced that it will not no longer retain this participation or potential reserves in its accounts, under the sanctions against Moscow.
“A contribution to the debate of general interest on the issue of fossil expansion”
Greenpeace intends to “make a contribution to the debate of general interest on the issue of fossil fuel expansion”, which will be at the heart of the COP28 in a month in Dubai (November 30 to December 12), underlines the NGO, at the day before the publication of the group’s financial results.
Greenpeace also accuses the multinational of having continued after the Paris agreement in 2015 to “engage in a perspective of exploration and opening of new oil and gas fields”, with “the acquisition of new licenses for exploration” in “84 different projects”. “The fossil fuel industry creates this famous demand to continue to reap huge profits, and locks us into dependence (…) for several decades,” commented Greenpeace.
“We continue to invest in new oil projects to meet the still growing global demand which, according to our projections, should stabilize until 2030 and then decrease” and to respond “to the natural decline of our current fields (4% per year ),” the group justified on Wednesday.