The question is: What’s a big oil company to do in the midst of a climate crisis that can only be stopped by putting fossil fuels aside?
Option A: use your economic power to reconvert yourself using the available technology to lead a real change in society. Definitely, be part of the solution.
Option B: invest several million dollars in a communication strategy to wash your faceshowing themselves committed to caring for the planet and the development of clean energy, but without changing anything fundamental.
The answer will not surprise: most big oil companies lean towards greenwashing. That is they prefer to use marketing to position themselves as ecological and sustainable when, in reality, their actions go against the environment.
The case of the Norwegian oil company Equinor, the same one that wants to carry out seismic exploration in the North Argentine Basin, is a clear example of this, they pointed out from Greenpeace.
It looks like something out of a greenwashing manual: in 2018, “Statoil” drops the “oil” (petroleum) from its name and renames itself “Equinor” (equity/balance+ Norwegian). The new identity was announced together with a renewed mission linked to the generation of “clean” energy.
This decision cost $32.5 million. Along with the name change, Equinor reinforced its purported commitment to sustainability by stating: “In line with the Paris Agreement, we have expanded our ambitions. By 2050, Equinor aspires to be a net zero emissions company, including emissions from using the energy we supply.”
From then to date, the actions speak for themselves, denying the promises that only remained in words. Because despite its claims to develop as a “broad energy company”, between 2010 and 2018 Equinor would have dedicated only 2% of its capital spending to low-carbon energy sources, such as wind and solar, they indicated from the entity environmentalist Greenpeace.
They even detailed that, by the end of 2020, the company only had 0.75 GW of installed capacity in Renewable Energies in all its operations worldwide. And his express plans are to expand to just 4% by 2026.
In short, “until now it has not shown the will to reduce its emissions and remains on the sidelines of the proposals promoted in the 2016 Paris Agreement,” they said.
And they remarked that “despite the crudeness of its tactic, the truth is that using its ambiguous name and flaunting its First World origin as if it were a guarantee of something, Equinor appeared in Argentina in 2019 to obtain exploration permits on the offshore platform. household per 1 million square kilometers. And he did it.”
“Although as a company it leaves a lot to be desired (it exerts pressure on governments, manipulates prices, etc.) it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the most disastrous inheritance is the contamination that derives from its actions: 9 incidents a year, according to the average. Evidence of this is found in our report as well and is based on Equinor’s own Sustainability Report,” they added.
To cite an example, they denounced from Greenpeace that “In 2020 there were 12 serious spills and 120 accidental spills across all of its operations in 2021 and in 2019 it spilled 8.9 million liters, a major accident that occurred at its South Riding Point plant in the Bahamas”.
As Patricio Eleisegui explains in his note for Revista Sudestada: “Organizations such as ClientEarth expose various features of Equinor’s operation in detail: In November 2019, the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reported that ‘Equinor leaders are accused of violations at various facilities, in oil fields around the entire continental shelf norway and on land’”.
For its part, another local newspaper, Norway Today, pointed out that, in different internal reports, Equinor acknowledges that it has been generating harmful emissions in that area with access to the North Sea for decades.
I’m doing research on Equinor.
Stripping us of all ideas about whether or not it is convenient to continue betting on fossil fuels if you want to curb GHG emissions, my preliminary appreciation of the environmental scrolls of this Norwegian company is MAMITA. ????????
— Valeria Fgl (@valeriafgl) January 4, 2022
Then, “it is not surprising that wherever the oil company begins operations, the demands of activists multiply“, they stated.
Equinor seeks to expand its operations in the Argentine Sea, an area where it plans to carry out seismic exploration and install a future oil exploitation that is located on the Continental Slope Front. This area was identified in 2014 by the National Environment portfolio as a candidate for a protected marine area, due to its relevance for marine ecosystems and for the conservation of the biodiversity of the Argentine Sea.
“In Argentina, for a few weeks we have been going through marches and counter-marches in the fight to ensure that Equinor fails to start its explorations in the Argentine Sea. The fight is not over yet and victories like the one that took place in the Arctic, in which popular pressure managed to postpone the oil exploitation of the Wisting field, in the Barents Sea, should help us not to give up. They want to extract every last drop of oil. we won’t let them“, sentenced from Greenpeace.
They pointed out that “Equinor has an exploitation operation in offshore projects in Norway with around 41 platforms. It also has several hydrocarbon processing plants throughout the territory. The data contemplated in the analysis correspond to the last 6 years, covering only those that involve the company Equinor, formerly known as Statoil. These are 73 documented events“.
They alerted that “Between 2016 and 2021, the Norwegian company Equinor registered 25 accidents on its offshore platforms in Norway. If its onshore facilities are also considered, the number of accidents in the 5-year period amounts to 37. These are only those that have been reported and registered.“.
“Regarding the accidents registered at offshore facilities, they only include the company’s facilities in the North Sea and some in the Barents Sea. The onshore accidents registered are those that occurred in Norwegian and Danish lands. However, one Once again, it should be noted that this company operates in more than 25 countries, with which this is only part of the incidents it generates. For example, the accident at South Riding Point in the Bahamas in 2019 is not included in this list” , they revealed.
They detailed that “among the registered accidents we find: overflows, equipment failures, fires and fires on board, gas leaks, injured personnel and oil spills. On 10 occasions the crew had to be evacuated from the platform. On 7 occasions there were injured personnel. In addition, among the registered accidents, 24 near misses are contemplatedidentified from periodic audits carried out by the authority. Among these incidents, non-conformities, irregularities, failures and lack of maintenance of facilities have been detected that could cause future accidents.“.
The Petroleum Safety Authority in Norway stated that “under slightly different circumstances, it could have caused a
serious accident with the loss of several lives, as well as substantial material damage and spills into the natural environment“.
Fuente: Greenpeace.