Washington/Oslo/Winnipeg — In January, Occidental Petroleum announced it had accomplished something no oil company had done before: It sold a shipload of crude that it said was 100% carbon-neutral.
Occidental and the UN programme say such credits make the two-million-barrel cargo carbon-neutral because they represent an equivalent amount of greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere by the projects generating the credits. Critics blast such programmes as smoke-and-mirrors public relations efforts that allow polluters to scrub their image while they continue to profit from climate damage.
But there are no uniform standards for calculating the full climate impact of fossil fuels, or how to properly offset it with environmental projects, industry experts say. Companies buying credits are also not obliged to disclose their cost or origin — a problem because they can vary widely in price and quality.
Occidental defended the deal, saying it could kick off a new market for oil offset with credits that directs money to green-energy projects. “We can be a big part of the global solution,” said Richard Jackson, Occidental’s president of operations for onshore resources and carbon management. Lundin was the world’s first oil company last year to receive independent certification it was producing low-carbon oil based on its reduction of emissions in producing oil from its Edvard Grieg field in Norway. It also aims to certify low-carbon oil from the Sverdrup field, also in Norway — Western Europe’s biggest — that Lundin co-owns with a consortium of partners.
In March, for example, Shell announced it had taken delivery of Europe’s first-yet carbon-neutral cargo of LNG from Russian supplier Gazprom. Gazprom provided the gas and both companies chipped in for the offsets, said Mehdi Chennoufi, Shell’s head of LNG Origination and Business Development. Other companies are turning to carbon-capture technology — despite its history of high costs and operational difficulties — to offset their products’ climate impact.