Fossil Fuels - Haggard Earth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Fossil Fuels; Hits: 119

Every company wants to produce the last barrel sold’: the treaty to stop fossil fuel production.Tzeporah Berman’s campaign group believes Cop30 will help its initiative to phase out oil, coal and gas take shape. Guardian Jonathan Watts And it’s only getting worse because every country is trying to artificially keep alive their fossil fuel industries, even though they know the damage they cause. At Cop30, we will be working to expand the group of countries participating in the development of the treaty.

What do you say to those who say a non-proliferation treaty is unfeasible anytime soon? Change starts that way. When we first talked about renewable energy, people literally laughed at us because it was so expensive. But we’ve seen a tremendous change in technology and in prices so that today we are powering whole countries with renewable energy. Every day, we see major breakthroughs. Last year, one in five cars sold on the planet was electric. We can change very quickly when we want to. Yes, the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is a big new idea, but at this moment in history, with floods, fires and heat waves sweeping the planet, we need big new ideas.

What progress have you made since the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative was founded? The push to negotiate a treaty is endorsed by more than 4,000 civil society groups including all of the world’s major faith, health, women’s and climate organisations. More than 120 cities have passed motions to support the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty and they are increasingly being joined by subnational governments such as California. We also now have 101 Nobel laureates and over 3,000 scientists who have endorsed the treaty. This growing movement helps create the political space for more countries to join. So far 17 countries are participating in the development of the treaty. In addition, 10 countries have been attending senior officials meetings as observers and are showing significant interest and we hope there will be another string of announcements at and before Belém.

But what are the prospects of achieving a critical mass? Treaties for landmines and chemical weapons started with a core group of just 20 to 30 countries who wanted ambitious, binding rules. That shifted the social norm so it became unacceptable to stockpile those weapons even for many nations who were not signatories to those treaties. Today, fossil fuels are our weapons of mass destruction. They kill more people on this planet every year than anything else. Even before we calculate the toll from climate change, air pollution alone kills 8 million people each year. Fossil fuels are the greatest threat to human life.

We expect to have enough countries next year to begin negotiations Before and during Cop30 we will be hosting major meetings of senior officials and ministers mapping the pathway toward negotiations, including the key convenings and conferences that need to be held in that process in the months ahead and we hope there will be a significant announcement on progress at Belém, so look out.

This goes beyond the traditional left-right divide, doesn’t it? For me, this all started with the conversations I had in Canada with the oil industry over the tar sands in Alberta. ......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/02/every-company-wants-to-produce-the-last-barrel-sold-the-plan-to-create-a-fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty

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Fossil-fuel firms receive US subsidies worth $31bn each year, study finds. Guardian Dharna Noor 9 Sept 2025 The US currently subsidizes the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of nearly $31bn per year, according to a new analysis.

That figure, calculated by the environmental campaign group Oil Change International, has more than doubled since 2017. And it is likely a vast understatement, due to the difficulty of quantifying the financial gains from some government supports, and to a lack of transparency and reliable data from government sources, the group says.These handouts pose a massive barrier to decarbonization, says the new report, which experts have long warned is urgently necessary to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis. “These subsidies allow for new production that would not otherwise occur,” said Collin Rees, US program manager at Oil Change International and the primary author of the new analysis. “They also, to an enormous extent, go to lining the pockets of shareholders and investors and fossil fuel executives.”For the analysis, Oil Change International totaled up tax breaks, lower rates to acquire land and other resources, direct appropriations, and other financial support from the US and government-funded groups, using the definition of fossil fuel subsidies established by the World Trade Organization. All told, US subsidies allow the sector to receive stunning 30,000% returns on investments, the authors found. The Guardian has contacted the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s fossil-fuel lobbying group, for comment.Among the biggest subsidies the US offers oil companies, the report found, is a federal tax rule allowing corporations to credit taxes and royalties they pay to foreign governments on overseas income against their domestic tax bills, to avoid being taxed twice.

Another major support measure is a t ax credit for capturing carbon, which is often framed as a climate solution but is primarily used to extract hard-to-reach reserves in a practice known as enhanced oil recovery. Amid pressure from campaigners and United Nations climate experts, at least 53 countries reformed their fossil-fuel subsidies between 2015 and 2020, according to the Swiss research group Global Subsidies Initiative. In 2021, Joe Biden also vowed to begin eliminating subsidies for planet-heating energy sources. “Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Biden said following his inauguration in 2021. Yet the US is moving in the wrong direction on the issue, the new report found: Trump’s signature tax-and-spend bill, which the president signed in July, is poised to hand fossil-fuel companies an additional $4bn per year across the next decade, the analysis found.Among the biggest supports for the oil industry in the megabill are expanded credits for carbon capture and a lowering of already sub-market royalty rates for coal, oil and gas production on public lands. Those enhanced supports could end up being even more valuable to the oil industry in later years, Rees says......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-fuels-subisidies-study

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Fossil-fuel firms receive US subsidies worth $31bn each year, study finds. Guardian Dharna Noor 9 Sept 2025 The US currently subsidizes the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of nearly $31bn per year, according to a new analysis.

That figure, calculated by the environmental campaign group Oil Change International, has more than doubled since 2017. And it is likely a vast understatement, due to the difficulty of quantifying the financial gains from some government supports, and to a lack of transparency and reliable data from government sources, the group says.These handouts pose a massive barrier to decarbonization, says the new report, which experts have long warned is urgently necessary to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis. “These subsidies allow for new production that would not otherwise occur,” said Collin Rees, US program manager at Oil Change International and the primary author of the new analysis. “They also, to an enormous extent, go to lining the pockets of shareholders and investors and fossil fuel executives.”For the analysis, Oil Change International totaled up tax breaks, lower rates to acquire land and other resources, direct appropriations, and other financial support from the US and government-funded groups, using the definition of fossil fuel subsidies established by the World Trade Organization. All told, US subsidies allow the sector to receive stunning 30,000% returns on investments, the authors found. The Guardian has contacted the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s fossil-fuel lobbying group, for comment.Among the biggest subsidies the US offers oil companies, the report found, is a federal tax rule allowing corporations to credit taxes and royalties they pay to foreign governments on overseas income against their domestic tax bills, to avoid being taxed twice.

Another major support measure is a t ax credit for capturing carbon, which is often framed as a climate solution but is primarily used to extract hard-to-reach reserves in a practice known as enhanced oil recovery. Amid pressure from campaigners and United Nations climate experts, at least 53 countries reformed their fossil-fuel subsidies between 2015 and 2020, according to the Swiss research group Global Subsidies Initiative. In 2021, Joe Biden also vowed to begin eliminating subsidies for planet-heating energy sources. “Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Biden said following his inauguration in 2021. Yet the US is moving in the wrong direction on the issue, the new report found: Trump’s signature tax-and-spend bill, which the president signed in July, is poised to hand fossil-fuel companies an additional $4bn per year across the next decade, the analysis found.Among the biggest supports for the oil industry in the megabill are expanded credits for carbon capture and a lowering of already sub-market royalty rates for coal, oil and gas production on public lands. Those enhanced supports could end up being even more valuable to the oil industry in later years, Rees says......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-fuels-subisidies-study

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World's biggest carbon capture project could 'essentially drain Alberta', experts warn. National Observer Darius Snieckus Rory White 18 Dec 2025 The world's largest carbon capture and storage complex planned for northern Alberta could use most of the surplus water in the giant Cold Lake-Beaver River basin, potentially forcing water rationing in the province. The $16.5-billion megaproject is a linchpin of the “grand bargain” energy deal signed by the Canadian government with Alberta last month. Many question marks hang over the project though, including how much water Pathways CCS — or any next generation carbon capture initiative — will actually consume. The impact of water use by CCS facilities would be “manageable,” according to modelling commissioned by the province earlier this year. But research from Lorenzo Rosa, a CCS specialist at Stanford University’s Carnegie Science Institute, paints a very different picture: the Pathways project could swallow up as much as 740 litres of water for every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO₂) captured. The CCS megaproject’s developer, Pathways Alliance, has never publicly revealed its forecasted water usage for the project. The vast complex would connect 20 onsite oilfield CCS plants capturing and piping CO₂ about 400 kilometres to a central storage hub in Cold Lake, northeast of Edmonton, for injection deep underground. Pathways Alliance, made up of petrogiants Canadian Natural, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, Imperial and Suncor, forecasts curbing the release of CO₂ by 10 to 12 megatonnes a year from operations on projects around Fort McMurray, the sector’s heartland, by 2030. Oilsands operations currently emit about 89 megatonnes a year, according to 2023 data from Environment and Climate Change Canada. Experts on water use in CCS — much of which could be built around post-combustion, amine-based technologies that would be installed for the Pathways project — underscore the huge volumes of water needed for the energy-intensive CO₂ capturing operation.

Earlier this year, the Alberta government commissioned a study from WaterSmart Solutions, a US-owned, Calgary-based consultancy, to quantify the volumes of water that would be used by CCS projects in the province. The research came to a more optimistic worst-case scenario of 220 litres per tonne of CO₂. If that expectation held, then the total draw from the Beaver River Basin would be around 1.7 billion litres of water per year — a figure which the report acknowledges could “significantly impact water availability,” leading to “trade-offs within the water-energy-food nexus.” But many of the experts Canada's National Observer spoke with suspect the true freshwater use could be even higher. Lorenzo Rosa said while it is difficult to estimate, “for oil sands, the 740 [litres per tonne of CO2 captured] estimate is likely more representative.” This much higher volume, he said, aligned with results from work by his group on fossil gas and coal plants retrofitted with CCS.

‘No guaranteed upper limit’.......One of the engineers involved in the WaterSMART report, Steve Herman, clarified that estimates were based on lead-off engineering research work, known as FEED studies.“We are not trying to say that 220 litres/tonne [of CO₂] is literally the guaranteed upper limit,” he said in an email to Canada's National Observer. The FEED studies found that some CCS facilities would, in fact, produce more water than they used by employing a high-cost air cooling and closed-system water reuse. But the authors of this FEED work, based at the International CCS Knowledge Centre, an oil and gas industry thinktank, told Canada's National Observer that “extrapolating sector-wide water stress to 2050 based solely on these FEED studies may not be reliable.” Erica Pensini, a professor at the University of Guelph who previously worked in the petrochemical and fracking sectors, put it more bluntly: “If you make the projection based on the lowest numbers, you're going to essentially drain Alberta.” She added that climate change will both exacerbate water shortages and reduce the efficiency of the cooling systems required for the Pathways CCS project, pushing real-world water use well beyond “best-case assumptions.”The Pathways Alliance did not respond to a request for their data on predicted water use at the CCS project.

‘Some pretty major assumptions’ Bill Donahue, an independent environmental science consultant who previously held senior roles at Alberta Environment and Parks, echoed these warnings......https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/18/analysis/pathways-carbon-capture-water-use?utm_source=National+Observer&utm_campaign=f21ea00c00-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_20_12_33_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-9f497c89ee-277110094

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Oil Is a Leading Cause of War. Between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil. Mother Jones Michael Klare 9 July 2014 Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts. At first glance, these upheavals appear to be independent events, driven by their own unique and idiosyncratic circumstances. But look more closely and they share several key characteristics—notably, a witch’s brew of ethnic, religious, and national antagonisms that have been stirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy.

In each of these conflicts, the fighting is driven in large part by the eruption of long-standing historic antagonisms among neighboring (often intermingled) tribes, sects, and peoples. In Iraq and Syria, it is a clash among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; in Nigeria, among Muslims, Christians, and assorted tribal groupings; in South Sudan, between the Dinka and Nuer; in Ukraine, between Ukrainian loyalists and Russian-speakers aligned with Moscow; in the East and South China Sea, among the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and others. It would be easy to attribute all this to age-old hatreds, as suggested by many analysts; but while such hostilities do help drive these conflicts, they are fueled by a most modern impulse as well: the desire to control valuable oil and natural gas assets. Make no mistake about it, these are twenty-first-century energy wars.

It should surprise no one that energy plays such a significant role in these conflicts. Oil and gas are, after all, the world’s most important and valuable commodities and constitute a major source of income for the governments and corporations that control their production and distribution. Indeed, the governments of Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, South Sudan, and Syria derive the great bulk of their revenues from oil sales, while the major energy firms (many state-owned) exercise immense power in these and the other countries involved. Whoever controls these states, or the oil- and gas-producing areas within them, also controls the collection and allocation of crucial revenues. Despite the patina of historical enmities, many of these conflicts, then, are really struggles for control over the principal source of national income. Moreover, we live in an energy-centric world where control over oil and gas resources (and their means of delivery) translates into geopolitical clout for some and economic vulnerability for others. Because so many countries are dependent on energy imports, nations with surpluses to export—including Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and South Sudan—often exercise disproportionate influence on the world stage. What happens in these countries sometimes matters as much to the rest of us as to the people living in them, and so the risk of external involvement in their conflicts—whether in the form of direct intervention, arms transfers, the sending in of military advisers, or economic assistance—is greater than almost anywhere else.

The struggle over energy resources has been a conspicuous factor in many recent conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005. On first glance, the fossil-fuel factor in the most recent outbreaks of tension and fighting may seem less evident. But look more closely and you’ll see that each of these conflicts is, at heart, an energy war.

Iraq, Syria, and ISIS,,,,,,The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni extremist group that controls large chunks of western Syria and northern Iraq, is a well-armed militia intent on creating an Islamic caliphate in the areas it controls. In some respects, it is a fanatical, sectarian religious organization, seeking to reproduce the pure, uncorrupted piety of the early Islamic era. At the same time, it is engaged in a conventional nation-building project, seeking to create a fully functioning state with all its attributes.As the United States learned to its dismay in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation-building is expensive: institutions must be created and financed, armies recruited and paid, weapons and fuel procured, and infrastructure maintained. Without oil (or some other lucrative source of income), ISIS could never hope to accomplish its ambitious goals. However, as it now occupies key oil-producing areas of Syria and oil-refining facilities in Iraq, it is in a unique position to do so. Oil, then, is absolutely essential to the organization’s grand strategy.

Syria was never a major oil producer, but its prewar production of some 400,000 barrels per day did provide the regime of Bashar al-Assad with a major source of income. Now, most of the country’s oil fields are under the control of rebel groups, including ISIS, the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, and local Kurdish militias. Although production from the fields has dropped significantly, enough is being extracted and sold through various clandestine channels to provide the rebels with income and operating funds. “Syria is an oil country and has resources, but in the past they were all stolen by the regime,” said Abu Nizar, an anti-government activist. “Now they are being stolen by those who are profiting from the revolution.” At first, many rebel groups were involved in these extractive activities, but since January, when it assumed control of Raqqa, the capital of the province of that name, ISIS has been the dominant player in the oil fields. In addition, it has seized fields in neighboring Deir al-Zour Province along the Iraq border. Indeed, many of the US-supplied weapons it acquired from the fleeing Iraqi army after its recent drive into Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities have been moved into Deir al-Zour to help in the organization’s campaign to take full control of the region.

In Iraq, ISIS is fighting to gain control over Iraq’s largest refinery at Baiji in the central part of the country. However the present fighting in northern Iraq plays out, it is obvious that there, too, oil is a central factor. ISIS seeks both to deny petroleum supplies and oil revenue to the Baghdad government and to bolster its own coffers, enhancing its capacity for nation-building and further military advances. At the same time, the Kurds and various Sunni tribes—some allied with ISIS—want control over oil fields located in the areas under their control and a greater share of the nation’s oil wealth. ed:.....and it's still happening especially in third world countries -wherever oil is in the ground violence, conflict will emerge.....read on https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/7-places-where-oil-fueling-conflict/

COP 30....The Treaty to Stop Fossil Fuel Production?

Fossil-fuel Firms Receive US Subsidies worth $31bn each Year, study finds.

Fossil-fuel Firms Receive US Subsidies worth $31bn each Year, study finds.

World's Biggest Carbon Capture Project could 'essentially Drain Alberta',

Oil Is a Leading Cause of War. Between one-quarter and one-half of Interstate Wars since 1973 have been Linked to Oil.

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