"With UN climate negotiations set for next month, a growing number of nations and business leaders are calling for a phaseout of fossil fuels. But with major fossil fuel expansion projects moving ahead around the globe, advocates of strong action face a daunting challenge."
"It is boom time in the deserts of New Mexico and West Texas, where vast oil reserves buried in the Permian geological basin are getting a second life, thanks to fracking. Though tapped for more than a century, the basin still contains the largest oil reserve in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. Output has tripled in a decade. And big oil appears determined to tap every last drop.
In October, Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental, one of the largest operators there, promised yet more production in a basin that Bloomberg last year described as “uniquely positioned to become the world’s most important growth engine for oil production.”
Did nobody tell them about climate change?
The fossil-fuel business is burgeoning too on the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean, at the giant Bovanenkovo gas field in Russia’s Yamal peninsula. By drilling deeper, state-owned Gazprom plans to more than double production by 2030. Bovanenkovo may soon be producing 40 percent of Russian gas.
Meanwhile, China itself is set to open dozens more giant coal mines — each with reserves whose burning would emit more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide. China has almost a third of the world’s proposed new coal mines, and Beijing this year announced plans to fast-track them into service."
Fred Pearce reports for Yale Environment 360 November 2, 2023.
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