Some of the world's biggest oil companies, including Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell , pledged on Friday to invest $1 billion to develop climate-friendly technologies as a global deal to wean the world off oil came into force.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), also including Total , BP , Eni , Repsol , Statoil , CNPC, Pemex [PEMX.UL] and Reliance Industries , launched the Climate Investments fund which will invest in technologies to reduce carbon emissions but which will also help an increase gas use.
The companies pledged to use a large share of the $1 billion for speeding up carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) in gas-fired power plants and toward reducing leakages of methane, one of the most polluting greenhouse gases.
"If we can reduce and build the technologies to monitor and reduce fugitive methane emissions that's like an essential license for us to be able to advocate natural gas," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley told journalists.
The investment is nevertheless dwarfed by the joint annual spending of the member companies, even as they battle one of the longest downturns in the sector's history. Shell, Total, BP, Statoil, Repsol and Eni are expected to spend nearly $100 billion in 2016.
The 10 firms, which jointly produce around 20 percent of the world's oil and gas, have already screened a list of 200 CCUS-related technologies and are now assessing which one or ones to develop to commercial scale.
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