Oil, Gas & Climate Change : What Does It Mean For 2023?

In the 1950s, alarm bells began to warn oil companies of global warming and its potential impact on the business. Later, these companies began lobbying thousands upon thousands of dollars to convince politicians and most people that there was no global warming, that even if it existed, it was only a natural phenomenon, and that the big oil companies were not liable. In 2015, a series of media studies concluded that, based on their scientific studies, all sectors of the oil company from 1977 to 1987 had concluded that "global warming is not a real risk”.

In 2016, an old document dating back to 1968 was reproduced and updated by researchers at the Environment Agency. This document was then submitted to the American Petroleum Institute, which warned of the dangers of global warming and its potential impact on the oil industry. Demand for oil is growing fast, and the energy industry in the United States and worldwide plans to meet it.

A new document now underlines the need to look at things in a similar way. : This document was submitted to the American Petroleum Institute (API) in 1954. To prevent oil industry leaders from taking measures that would increase the risk of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere, they wrote. IPY could fund research to develop additional methods to calculate carbon dioxide production, "the document says.

This warning came as a great surprise to climate scientists themselves, considering that the important date was 1960. That year, a scientist named Charles Keeling reported in a journal that measurements were being made in Antarctica every three years. He calculated that temperatures and water levels could rise simultaneously by the end of the modern century.

We now attribute atmospheric technical know-how to an economic age that began because of the keel curve. Attention to carbon dioxide has increased almost as much as one might expect given the global inflammation of fossil fuels, " he wrote.

It was this public warning and information that prompted US President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the first ever National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1965, 53 years ago, in 1965. No matter how many major oil companies try to focus on renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal, most of these organizations cannot change the fact that their main product is hydrocarbons, the cause of climate change.