OPEC says it's 'singled-out' by U.N. war on climate change
OPEC says it's 'singled-out' by U.N. war on climate change
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters): The world's most powerful oil producing cartel said on Friday that its member countries were being unfairly targeted by United Nations efforts to combat climate change.
OPEC said that the US$30 billion annual revenue losses its members expect as a result of hydrocarbon emissions curbs under discussion at the Nov. 2-13 Buenos Aires talks will be too much for their developing economies to bear without compensation.
"We are not against scientific or technological change, because this will benefit all of humanity, but we do not want to be punished unjustly and singled out," said Shokri Ghanem, Director of Research for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
"OPEC is not against measures to clean the environment, but there should be some justice," Ghanem told Reuters.
Environment officials and climate experts from around the world have gathered in the Argentine capital to pick up where talks left off last December in Kyoto, Japan, where developed countries pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
OPEC officials and a wide array of other industry observers are among the Buenos Aires summit's 4,700 participants.
The oil producers' cartel, which satisfies around a third of the world's roughly 74 million barrel per day oil (bpd) demand, said new energy taxation policies in the industrialized world could virtually cripple the economies of its eleven member countries.
OPEC is comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Indonesia, Nigeria, Qatar and Algeria.
"It is important to recognize that we are developing countries whose main income is oil, and when a developing country incurs a loss of income amounting to billions of dollars per year, its ability to meet its needs is going to be completely hampered," Ghanem said.
OPEC predicts that new taxes in the developed world, particularly in Europe, will cut global oil demand from a projected 100 million bpd in 2020, to around 81 million bpd.
Petroleum taxes could add an additional $70 to the price of barrel of oil by that time, Ghanem said, over and above taxes which already represent 75 percent of petroleum product prices in Europe and 45 percent of those in the United States.
OPEC said that the gradual loss of revenue could not come at a worse time, as oil exporting economies have already been hit by a decline in oil prices by about $6 per barrel this year compared to last.
U.N. climate change initiatives target a basket of six greenhouse gases thought to contribute to global warming in the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, released during hydrocarbon combustion, is the gas most responsible for global warming, with annual global emissions levels in the region of 23 billion tonnes.