包括荷蘭皇家殼牌公司、英國石油公司、埃尼公司、雷普索爾公司和道達爾能源公司在內的許多歐洲最大的石油公司都制定了自己的目標，即削減上游業務的碳強度，他們承諾到2050年前或更早時候成為凈零排放企業。
來自投資者和股東的壓力也在增加，包括石油行業要求減少所謂的范圍 3排放——即使用其產品產生的排放。
伍德麥肯茲說，低碳電力將是減少排放的關鍵，該公司估計，約三分之二的排放來自電力消費——生產、加工和液化。
根據伍德麥肯茲排放基準工具的數據，在2021年至2025年期間，碳強度最高的地區將是大洋洲，這主要是由于液化產生的大量排放。 其次是非洲，這也是因為在上游作業中伴生氣放空燃燒占了很大份額。再其次是亞洲，亞洲的產量和液化排放較高，而北美的產量和甲烷損失占了碳強度的很大一部分。
伍德麥肯茲北海上游油氣首席分析師Jessica Brewer表示：“但我們需要克服技術、物流和商業方面的挑戰。”
例如，伍德麥肯茲6月份曾表示，由于缺乏解決伴生氣放空燃燒問題的基礎設施，非洲擁有一些污染最嚴重的資產。
伍德麥肯茲在一份報告中稱：“減少排放并考慮新能源多元化確實是不可避免的。”
由于投資者希望看到減排方面的切實努力，國際石油巨頭應該努力解決非洲的問題，非洲時下正在計劃新的液化天然氣(LNG)項目。
石油行業已經提出了削減運營排放的方法，不僅是在非洲，尤其是在股東和法院對大型石油公司的經營許可證發出了迄今最嚴厲的警告之后。
石油公司已經開始解決投資者對排放的擔憂。 一些公司正在利用可再生能源加速油田的電氣化，而另一些公司(實際上大多數公司)正在研究碳捕獲、儲存和利用(CCSU)技術，以期在作業過程中去除二氧化碳。
例如，挪威能源巨頭Equinor正在電氣化其作業，用可再生能源取代主要來自燃氣輪機的化石能源供應。
Equinor表示：“北海電氣化是實現我們未來幾十年氣候雄心的主要措施之一。”
美國石油巨頭埃克森美孚公司和雪佛龍公司不像歐洲石油巨頭那樣投資太陽能或風能，他們押注于碳捕獲和儲存（CCS）。 許多歐洲石油公司也希望減少碳足跡，幫助整個產業群脫碳。
今年早些時候，埃克森美孚公司在美國創建了一個新業務——埃克森美孚低碳解決方案，將其低碳技術組合商業化，首先重點是CCS。 雪佛龍公司還將CCS作為未來幾十年投資的一個領域。
由于各領域越來越多的公司承諾在未來二三十年實現凈零排放，最大的石油公司認為CCS是幫助碳密集型行業減少排放的方法之一。
石油巨頭們已經開始在歐洲部分地區開展幾個大型CCS項目，旨在實現工業群的脫碳。
即使是在油砂產地——世界上最密集的原油資源之一——加拿大，最大的生產商也宣布了一項凈零合作計劃，以實現油砂作業到2050年的凈零排放。 這個計劃包括運營加拿大油砂生產約90%的公司：加拿大自然資源公司、塞諾佛斯能源公司、帝國能源公司、MEG能源公司和森科爾能源公司。
加拿大油砂集團表示，這個計劃雄心勃勃，“將需要行業和政府的大量投資，以推進新技術和新興技術的研究和開發。”
來自加拿大油砂集團的警告對所有正在出現的能夠節約能源和減少上游作業排放的技術都是有效的——這些技術需要大量投資，而不僅僅來自石油巨頭。
李峻 編譯自 油價網
原文如下：
Big Oil Faces Mounting Pressure To Cut Upstream Emissions
Pressure is mounting on the oil and gas sector to clean up its act and reduce emissions from operations, the so-called Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
Many of Europe’s largest oil corporations, including Shell, BP, Eni, Repsol, and Total, have imposed their own targets to cut carbon intensity from their upstream operations as they have pledged to become net-zero emission businesses by 2050 or sooner.
The pressure from investors and shareholders is also growing, including on the oil industry to reduce the so-called Scope 3 emissions—those emissions generated by the use of their products.
Low-carbon power would be a key to cutting emissions, says Wood Mackenzie, which estimates that around two-thirds of emissions come from power consumption - production, processing, and liquefaction.
Between 2021 and 2025, the region with the highest carbon intensity will be Oceania, mostly due to the large emissions from liquefaction, according to the Wood Mackenzie Emissions Benchmarking Tool. Africa comes next, also because of the large share of flaring in upstream operations, followed by Asia with high production and liquefaction emissions, and North America, where production and methane losses account for much of the carbon intensity.
“But technical, logistical and commercial challenges need to be overcome,”
Jessica Brewer, Principal Analyst, North Sea Upstream Oil and Gas at WoodMac, notes.
Africa, for example, hosts some of the most polluting assets because of a lack of infrastructure to solve the gas flaring problem, Wood Mackenzie said last month.
“Reducing emissions and considering new energy diversification is really unavoidable,” WoodMac said in a report.
As investors want proof of solid efforts for emission reduction, international oil majors should work to address the problem in Africa, where new liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects are being planned.
The oil industry has proposed ways to slash emissions from operations, not only in Africa, especially after shareholders and courts delivered a warning, the starkest yet, about Big Oil’s license to operate.
Oil firms have started to address investor concerns about emissions. Some are accelerating the electrification of oilfields with renewable sources of energy, others—most actually—are looking at carbon capture, storage, and utilization (CCSU) technologies to remove the carbon dioxide during operations.
Norway’s Equinor, for example, is electrifying operations, replacing a fossil-based power supply, mostly from gas turbines, with renewable energy.
“Electrification in the North Sea is one of the main measures to reach our climate ambitions for the next decades,” the Norwegian energy giant says.
U.S. supermajors Exxon and Chevron, who—unlike Europe’s giants are not investing in solar or wind energy—are betting on carbon capture and storage. So are many European oil firms in hopes of reducing their carbon footprint and helping whole industrial clusters to decarbonize.
In the United States, Exxon created earlier this year a new business, ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, to commercialize its low-carbon technology portfolio, focusing first on CCS. Chevron also bets on CCS as one area in which it would invest in the coming decades.
The biggest oil firms believe that CCS is one of the ways to help carbon-intensive industries to reduce their emissions, as a growing number of companies in various sectors are committing to net-zero operations within the next two to three decades.
Oil majors are already working on several large-scale CCS projects aimed at decarbonizing industrial clusters in parts of Europe.
Even in Canada, home to the oil sands—one of the most emission-intensive crude resources in the world—the biggest producers announced a net-zero collaboration initiative to achieve net-zero emissions from oil sands operations by 2050. The initiative includes companies that operate some 90 percent of Canada’s oil sands production: Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy, and Suncor Energy.
The initiative is ambitious and “will require significant investment on the part of both industry and government to advance the research and development of new and emerging technologies,” the group said.
The warning from the Canadian groups is valid for all technologies emerging to save the day and reduce emissions from upstream operations—those technologies need a lot of investment, and not just from Big Oil.
