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UN Climate Chief: Carbon Bubble Is Now a Reality
UN Climate Chief: Carbon Bubble Is Now a Reality
1/21/2015
The so-called “carbon bubble” is no longer a concept, it’s a reality, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who will oversee the crucial UN climate conference in Paris in December.
Investors, who sunk their money into the fossil fuel sector, are going to come up losers, she suggested, as plummeting oil prices have made new extraction projects too costly to continue to pursue and concerns about global warming have made them too risky.
“A lot of the stranded asset conversations we’ve been having for a long time are now coming true,” she told RTCC, speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “Those expensive oil projects—deep sea, Arctic, tar sands—those are actually beginning to be taken off the table because of the low oil prices.”
...RTCC cited a number of expensive exploration and extraction projects that have already been cancelled. Chevron has delayed plans to drill in the Canadian Arctic. Norway’s Statoil has returned three licenses to explore for oil off the Greenland coast. And Shell and Qatar Petroleum announced last week they were scrapping a planned $6.5 billion petrochemical project in Qatar...
In the U.S., Texas is feeling the brunt of the oil bust, as extraction companies lay off workers.The New York Times reported yesterday, “With oil prices plummeting by more than 50 percent since June, the gleeful mood of recent years has turned glum here in West Texas as the frenzy of shale oil drilling has come to a screeching halt. Every day, oil companies are decommissioning rigs and announcing layoffs. Small companies that lease equipment have fallen behind in their payments.”...
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/01/20/un-climate-chief-carbon-bubble-now-reality/
1/21/2015
The so-called “carbon bubble” is no longer a concept, it’s a reality, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who will oversee the crucial UN climate conference in Paris in December.
Investors, who sunk their money into the fossil fuel sector, are going to come up losers, she suggested, as plummeting oil prices have made new extraction projects too costly to continue to pursue and concerns about global warming have made them too risky.
“A lot of the stranded asset conversations we’ve been having for a long time are now coming true,” she told RTCC, speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “Those expensive oil projects—deep sea, Arctic, tar sands—those are actually beginning to be taken off the table because of the low oil prices.”
...RTCC cited a number of expensive exploration and extraction projects that have already been cancelled. Chevron has delayed plans to drill in the Canadian Arctic. Norway’s Statoil has returned three licenses to explore for oil off the Greenland coast. And Shell and Qatar Petroleum announced last week they were scrapping a planned $6.5 billion petrochemical project in Qatar...
In the U.S., Texas is feeling the brunt of the oil bust, as extraction companies lay off workers.The New York Times reported yesterday, “With oil prices plummeting by more than 50 percent since June, the gleeful mood of recent years has turned glum here in West Texas as the frenzy of shale oil drilling has come to a screeching halt. Every day, oil companies are decommissioning rigs and announcing layoffs. Small companies that lease equipment have fallen behind in their payments.”...
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/01/20/un-climate-chief-carbon-bubble-now-reality/
(xposting in EEG)
