How Much Have the Oil Supermajors Contributed to Climate Change? The Carbon Footprint of the Oil Refining and Petroleum Products Sales Sectors

Understanding the carbon footprint of countries and companies along the oil value chain is fundamental to outlining paths to reduced reliance on fossil fuels. 

Adopting a supply-chain approach, CCSI has estimated the global carbon footprint of the oil refining and petroleum sales sectors from 1980 to 2019 for the 83 countries that jointly accounted for 93% of the global crude oil refining throughput in 2015.

The CCSI report also assesses the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from the oil refining and petroleum products sales businesses of the “Oil Supermajors”—BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies. 

CCSI's analysis also attests to the lack of a reliable dataset and a harmonized carbon accounting method that would allow comparisons across countries and companies.

The study—How Much Have the Oil Supermajors Contributed to Climate Change? The Carbon Footprint of the Oil Refining and Petroleum Products Sales Sectors—published in March 2022, is available for download here:

Read also the Infogram presenting a short and visual overview of key findings of the study, available here and below

This project was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.