US plan to exploit Venezuela’s oil could eat up 13% of carbon budget to keep 1.5C limit | Climate crisis
US plans to exploit Venezuela’s oil reserves could, by 2050, consume more than a tenth of the remaining global carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C, according to an exclusive analysis.
The calculation highlights that any moves to further exploit the South American nation’s oil reserves – the world’s largest, at least on paper – would put increasing pressure on climate goals and risk plunging Earth further into climate catastrophe.
Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are so vast that if fully exploited, they would single-handedly deplete the entire carbon budget needed to keep the world within the 1.5°C temperature rise range, which climate scientists say is the limit to avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
Such an eventuality is unlikely. After years of sanctions, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is decrepit and in ruins. But in the week after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by US special forces and transferred to New York, Donald Trump urged oil companies to invest $100bn (£74bn) to keep Venezuela’s wells running.
“We’re going to pull out oil numbers like few people have seen,” Trump told oil executives on Friday.
An analysis carried out for the Guardian by ClimatePartner, a carbon accounting company, modeled the carbon impact of growing Venezuela’s oil production by +0.5 million barrels per day by 2028, increasing to +1.58 million barrels per day from 2035 to 2050.
Such a scenario – which would still be far from the 3.5 million barrels per day produced during Venezuela’s last oil boom in the 1990s – would alone consume 13% of the remaining total carbon budget to keep global warming below 1.5°C.
The oil extracted from Venezuela’s vast reserves is, according to industry estimates, the dirtiest in the world.
Classified as a heavy, sour crude, Venezuelan crude has a dense, tar-like consistency and high sulfur content. These fluids do not flow like conventional oil; compared to the light, sweet crude from a country like Saudi Arabia, extracting them from the ground requires energy-intensive processes.
It is for these reasons that a study by S&P Global Platts Analytics found that the deposits of Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt had by far the highest carbon intensity of all major oil regions.
For example, it was almost 1,000 times higher than crude produced from Norway’s Johan Sverdrup field, which has a carbon intensity of 1.6 kg of carbon dioxide per barrel of oil equivalent – compared to 1,460 kg of CO2 equivalent/boe for Venezuela’s Orinoco belt. The report finds that Venezuela’s “extreme” carbon intensity shows that this raw flow “would face challenges in a world with tight carbon budgets.”
Hollie Parry, senior analyst at ClimatePartner, said: “The decision to increase production of one of the world’s most carbon-intensive crude oils to historic levels would consume around 13% of the remaining global carbon budget – the equivalent of almost a decade of emissions from the entire EU, from a single oil expansion. In a rapidly warming world, such a decision would lock in decades of high emissions at precisely the moment the science demands a transition rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and low-carbon solutions.
Environmental advocates have criticized U.S. claims to Venezuelan oil, a move that is “both reckless and dangerous,” according to Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International.
He said: “The only safe path is a just transition away from fossil fuels, one that protects health, safeguards ecosystems and supports communities rather than sacrificing them for short-term profit. »
