International oil and gas firms, while not going totally green, are looking to lessen the impact that their work makes on the environment. Coinciding with Paris Climate Week 2015, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), whose members include BG Group, BP, ENI, Pemex, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Sinopec, and Total, held its first high-level multi-stakeholder workshop meeting to discuss sector contributions to help address climate change.
Combined, OGCI member companies produce almost 25 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, around one-sixth of the world’s oil and gas production.
OGCI and its member companies are committed to an ambitious and action-focused agenda to drive the sector forward on climate change contributions. This includes proactively strengthening collaboration, information sharing and joint reporting to improve oil and gas industry greenhouse gas emissions management and to help drive the transition to lower carbon energy.
During the one-day OGCI meeting experts from a wide range of oil and gas industry stakeholder groups participated in technical workshops clustered around the OGCI’s three active, priority work-streams:
· Role of Natural Gas – including role of natural gas in the energy mix, methane emission management, reduction of gas flaring, and energy efficiency.
· Carbon Reduction Instruments & Tools – managing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the operating and product efficiency of oil and gas production companies.
· Long Term Solutions – developing visions of the long term energy mix and assessing innovative technology, regulation and change in customer behaviour.
The OGCI workshop meeting was addressed by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Janos Pasztor, Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Change, United Nations.
Outcomes from the workshop will help inform the OGCI’s first joint report that will be published ahead of the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP21). The report will highlight practical actions taken by OGCI member companies to improve greenhouse gas emissions management and to transition to lower carbon energy in the longer term.