D66-leden willen weten: waarom grepen opeenvolgende bestuurders niet in?
De leden van D66 komen zondag in Den Bosch bijeen om te praten over een lang verzwegen kwestie rond grensoverschrijdend gedrag. De belangrijkste vraag waar antwoord op moet komen: waarom grepen opeenvolgende besturen en partijleiders niet in? Oud-bestuursleden steken de hand in eigen boezem, maar wijzen ook naar de partijleiding van toen.
Alexander Pechtold kondigt in 2018 zijn afscheid als D66-fractieleider aan. Volgens een oud-bestuurslid was het mede Pechtold die sancties tegen Frans van Drimmelen tegenhield.Beeld Marcel Krijgsman / ANP
Met nog een paar dagen te gaan voor de beladen ledenbijeenkomst ontvingen D66-leden dinsdag een e-mail van het bestuur: of de leden met het oog op zondag een enquête wilden invullen over hun verwachtingen. ‘Wat wil jij vooral uit deze ledenbijeenkomst halen?’
Het bestuur is, onder druk van ruim 750 kritische leden die de bijeenkomst hebben afgedwongen, sinds drie weken op zoek naar de juiste invulling van de dag. De zaak waarover opheldering moet komen draait om partijprominent Frans van Drimmelen, die in 2016 formeel door de politie werd gewaarschuwd dat hij moest stoppen met het stalken, intimideren en chanteren van een D66-medewerkster. Hoewel de partijtop hiervan op de hoogte werd gesteld, mocht de man in functie blijven. Pas eind vorige maand hebben partijleider Sigrid Kaag en voorzitter Victor Everhardt publiekelijk erkend dat hij zich schuldig maakte aan grensoverschrijdend gedrag op de werkvloer. Van Drimmelen heeft zijn lidmaatschap alsnog ingeleverd.
Aanvankelijk was het de bedoeling van het bestuur om zondag vooral niet te veel over de schuldvraag te praten, maar te discussiëren over hoopvolle, toekomstgerichte vragen als ‘Wat is nieuw leiderschap bij D66?’ Maar die opzet is door een groepje adviserende leden afgeschoten.
Daphnie Ploegstra en Jelle Ages zijn twee van de initiatiefnemers van een petitie die de partijtop tot opheldering dwingt. Ages hoopt dat het zondag geen sessie wordt waarin alleen maar gevraagd wordt wie er gaan aftreden. ‘Ik hoop vooral op een gesprek over de vraag waarom iemand die grensoverschrijdend gedrag heeft vertoond zo lang kon blijven zitten. Waarom is iedereen in de partijtop tot de keuze gekomen om niets te doen? Welk mechanisme zit daarachter?’
Voor Ploegstra is de belangrijkste vraag hoe en door wie de besluiten over deze precaire kwestie zijn genomen. ‘Waarom is niet ingegrepen op al die momenten dat de partijtop ervan wist?’
Excuses
Op die vraag is door de partijtop nog altijd geen helder antwoord gegeven. Wel kwamen er uitgebreide excuses aan het slachtoffer. ‘Hier heeft een vrouw te lang geen erkenning gehad voor geleden pijn’, zei partijleider Kaag op haar persconferentie op 21 april. ‘Uit menselijk oogpunt had ik anders moeten handelen.’ Partijvoorzitter Everhardt: ‘We moeten erkennen wat in het verleden fout is gegaan en laten zien hoe we het in de toekomst beter moeten gaan doen.’
Maar waarom twee opeenvolgende partijleiders (Alexander Pechtold en Kaag) en drie opeenvolgende partijvoorzitters (Letty Demmers, Anne-Marie Spierings en Everhardt) tot het besluit kwamen om de man geen sancties op te leggen, terwijl ook bij hen het politie-ingrijpen bekend was, blijft onduidelijk. Op hun persconferentie wezen Kaag en Everhardt naar het toenmalige partijbestuur, terwijl ook zij wisten dat onderzoeksbureau Bing in maart 2021 in een vertrouwelijke bijlage tot de conclusie kwam dat Van Drimmelen over de schreef was gegaan.
Voormalig D66-bestuursleden Saskia Boelema, Robert Strijk en Michiel Verkoulen.Beeld Foto’s
Oud-bestuursleden Saskia Boelema, Robert Strijk en Michiel Verkoulen steken de hand in eigen boezem. Maar het is niet het hele verhaal, benadrukken ze. Zij stellen dat de bestuursleden die destijds op de hoogte waren van de zaak meermaals hebben aangedrongen op sancties en dat het ‘heel duidelijk was’ dat het bestuur het ongewenst vond dat Van Drimmelen zijn functie zou houden. Maar zij erkennen ook ruiterlijk dat zij zelf onvoldoende op hun strepen zijn gaan staan toen bleek dathij toch in functie mocht blijven.
Strijk zegt de volle verantwoordelijkheid te nemen voor zijn handelen. Hij wil in aanloop naar de bijeenkomst de leden meer inzicht bieden in wat zich destijds heeft afgespeeld. ‘Eind april 2016 ben ik op de hoogte gebracht van de verhouding tussen de medewerker en Van Drimmelen.’ Het werd Strijk daarna duidelijk dat de vrouw de relatie had afgekapt en dat zij partijvoorzitter Demmers een half jaar eerder al had benaderd met klachten over stalkingsgedrag en intimidatie. Ik hoorde ook dat Demmers, Pechtold en de Thom de Graaf (toen nog fractievoorzitter in de Eerste Kamer, red.) Van Drimmelen eerder al in een gesprek hadden laten weten dat hij zijn gedrag moest veranderen.’
Maar dat gesprek was volgens Strijk niet voldoende, omdat de man uit hoofde van zijn functie de vrouw geregeld bleef tegenkomen op partijbijeenkomsten. ‘Saskia Boelema en ik vonden dat hij niet langer voorzitter van de talentencommissie kon blijven, maar volgens partijvoorzitter Demmers was er geen ruimte om harder op te treden. Er zouden al besluiten zijn genomen en daar kon niet meer van worden afgeweken.’ Achteraf zegt hij: ‘Ik had geen genoegen moeten nemen met de boodschap dat ‘er geen ruimte’ was om hem zijn functie te ontnemen.’
Oud-partijvoorzitter Letty Demmers, oud-fractievoorzitter in de Eerste Kamer Thom de Graaf en oud-fractieleider in de Tweede Kamer Alexander Pechtold.Beeld ANP
Onrecht
Oud-bestuurslid Michiel Verkoulen herinnert zich dat het bestuur in 2017 heeft vergaderd over de positie van Van Drimmelen. ‘De conclusie was dat zijn positie niet houdbaar was. Het heeft vervolgens veel te lang geduurd voordat hij wegging.’ Hij neemt het zichzelf kwalijk dat toen hij merkte dat Van Drimmelen op zijn positie bleef zitten, hij niet meer heeft gedaan. ‘Daar had ik als bestuurslid geen genoegen mee moeten nemen. Ik had moeten zeggen en ervoor moeten zorgen dat ons besluit moest worden uitgevoerd. Uiteindelijk is zij weggegaan en is hij blijven zitten. Dat is onrecht.’
Hoe het kan dat het bestuur destijds tot het besluit kwam dat Van Drimmelen uit zijn functies gezet moest worden, maar er niet naar is gehandeld, vindt Verkoulen een moeilijke vraag. ‘Het is logisch dat de politieke top en het bestuur met elkaar in overleg staan. Alleen sommige zaken zijn echt aan het bestuur. Wij hadden moeten zeggen: het voorzitterschap van de talentencommissie: daar gaat het bestuur over.’
Wie er precies verantwoordelijk voor is dat Van Drimmelen zijn termijn kon afmaken, kan Verkoulen niet zeggen. Waren het Alexander Pechtold en Thom de Graaf? ‘Dat weet ik niet. Ik constateer wel dat het bestuur had besloten dat hij uit zijn functie gezet had moeten worden. Wij hebben het vervolgens laten versloffen door niet daadkrachtig opvolging te geven aan ons eerder genomen besluit.’
Ook Strijk vindt het lastig te zeggen of de politieke leiding op het Binnenhof is gaan staan voor sancties tegen Van Drimmelen. ‘Ik weet dat wij wilden optreden, maar ik voelde dat we overruled werden door de partijvoorzitter. Als ik nu terugkijk, dan had ik moeten zeggen: het bestuur gaat over de talentencommissie.’
Boelema is het duidelijkst: in haar herinnering was het echt ‘heel helder’ dat de bestuursleden die op de hoogte waren van de zaak wilden dat de man vertrok, maar gebeurde dat niet omdat de politieke leiding dat tegenhield. ‘In mijn beleving hebben wij ons als landelijk bestuur door Pechtold en De Graaf laten overtuigen om de zaak niet verder te laten escaleren. Het einde van het liedje was dat Van Drimmelen bleef en de vrouw teleurgesteld vertrok’, aldus Boelema.
De Graaf is het ‘volstrekt oneens’ met de suggestie dat hij invloed zou hebben uitgeoefend op een besluit van het partijbestuur. ‘Ik heb mij daar niet mee bemoeid’. Hij is twee keer door toenmalig partijvoorzitter Demmers bij een gesprek over de zaak gevraagd en was ervan uitgegaan dat de kwestie daarna ‘adequaat door het partijbestuur opgelost zou worden’. Eind 2020 was hij verbaasd te lezen dat Van Drimmelen zijn functie had uitgezeten. Pechtold en Demmers willen niet ingaan op beweringen dat zij sancties zouden hebben tegengehouden. Voor antwoorden verwijzen zij naar het huidige bestuur. Maar ook huidig partijvoorzitter Victor Everhardt wilde hier deze week desgevraagd geen toelichting over geven.
ZORGEN OVER DE PARTIJCULTUUR
Hoewel er leden zijn die de zaak-Van Drimmelen zien als ‘een eenmalige, uit de hand gelopen affaire uit het verleden’ en na de excuses vooral vooruit willen kijken, staat de kwestie voor een ander deel van de leden juist voor een groter probleem binnen D66: de partijcultuur. Wat zegt het over de cultuur dat het grensoverschrijdend gedrag van een partijprominent jarenlang door de vingers is gezien? Dat een bestuursbesluit om Van Drimmelen uit zijn functie te zetten niet is opgevolgd? Waarom zijn de negentien andere meldingen over onveiligheid in de partij, die vorig jaar zijn binnengekomen bij Bing, niet verder onderzocht? Partijvoorzitter Everhardt liet drie weken geleden een resoluut ‘nee’ horen op de vraag of dat niet alsnog moet gebeuren. Waarom eigenlijk?
De oplossing zoekt D66 nu in het verstevigen van de meldcultuur: leden zijn expliciet opgeroepen om grensoverschrijdend gedrag binnen de partij te melden bij de daarvoor bestemde loketten. ‘Maar het probleem zat hem nooit in het melden’, vindt D66-lid Jelle Ages. ‘Het probleem was dat de melding in dit geval nooit serieus is genomen en stelselmatig is weggestopt.’
Dat heeft alles te maken met de focus van de huidige D66-partijtop op het beschermen van de eigen reputatie in plaats van het vertellen van de waarheid, denkt D66-lid Daphnie Ploegstra.’ Ik hoop dat er zondag aandacht komt voor de informele macht die sommige adviseurs en woordvoerders inmiddels hebben in de partij. Iedereen die in het kader werkt, heeft die invloed weleens ervaren. Ik wil dat de partij uitleg geeft over hoe die informele macht werkt en welke rol beeldvorming speelt bij het nemen van besluiten.’
De rechtbank Amsterdam behandelde donderdag de zaak van CDA’er Raymond Knops tegen NRC en De Limburger.Foto Remko de Waal/ANP
Hij deed het niet alleen voor zichzelf, zei Kamerlid (en oud-minister en staatssecretaris) Raymond Knops, maar namens al die andere hardwerkende bestuurders en politici die door nepnieuws worden getroffen.
CDA’er Knops zat donderdag bij de rechtbank Amsterdam, waar hij een zaak had aangespannen tegen NRC en De Limburger. Uit onderzoek van deze kranten in 2020 bleek dat hij bij de koop van een bouwperceel in 2010 via een ingewikkelde regeling „voor tienduizenden euro’s bevoordeeld was” ten opzichte van anderen die diezelfde regeling gebruikten.
Dat een oud-bewindspersoon media voor de rechter daagt is zeldzaam, maar Knops had naar eigen zeggen geen keus. De schade aan zijn reputatie was door de publicaties, en het „klakkeloos overnemen door blaadjes en sociale media”, te groot om te negeren. Zijn zorgen om reputatieschade weerhielden Knops er niet van om op steeds hardere toon beschuldigingen te uiten tegen NRC-journalist Joep Dohmen, een van de twee auteurs van de publicaties. Die was „malicieus”, schreef met een „giftige pen als wapen”, met de „kennelijke bedoeling om prijzen te winnen” en politici tot aftreden te dwingen. „Ondermijnend voor de rechtsstaat”, vond Knops.
Hij, Knops, stond nu op voor de slachtoffers van „de bende van Dohmen” een journalist die volgens het Kamerlid in de categorie past van internationale fraudeurs als Bernie Madoff, Diederik Stapel en The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort.
„Knops’ opmerkingen zijn een ongekend vergaande aanval op ons als journalistieke organisatie’’, zegt NRC-hoofdredacteur René Moerland. „Het toedichten van criminele of psychiatrische motieven, het beschuldigen van het ondermijnen van de rechtstaat zonder enige inhoudelijke onderbouwing is een onacceptabele aanval op onze journalist, die gewoon zijn werk doet, en goed doet.”
De beschuldigingen van Knops waren een zijspoor tijdens de zitting, die draaide om de analyse en conclusies die NRC en De Limburger na onderzoek trokken over omstandigheden rond de grondaankoop van Knops.
Ruimte-voor-ruimte
De aankoop liep via de zogeheten ruimte-voor-ruimteregeling. Daarmee mochten particulieren via een bedrijf van de provincie Limburg agrarische grond omzetten in grond met woonbestemming. Terwijl anderen in de regel 1.000 vierkante meter grond met woonbestemming kochten, kocht Knops van het provinciale ruimtebedrijf een perceel met woonbestemming dat volgens de notariële akte 750 vierkante meter groot was, maar bij meting door het Kadaster 1.175 vierkante meter bleek te zijn. Uiteindelijk kende de gemeente zelfs 1.500 vierkante meter woonbestemming toe.
Volgens Knops’ advocaat Josine van den Berg leverde de „wat ongelukkig verlopen” kadastrale vastlegging niets op: Knops had immers slechts 750 vierkante meter nodig voor het huis dat hij wilde bouwen, en regels maken het bebouwen van de rest volgens haar onmogelijk.
Langgevelwoningen
Het verschil tussen de 1.500 toegekende vierkante meters woonbestemming en de 750 gekochte vierkante meters woonbestemming leverde Knops juist onmiskenbaar financieel voordeel op, zo betoogde advocaat Jens van den Brink namens NRC en De Limburger. Wie beweert dat een woonbestemming niet meer waard is dan agrarische grond „kan niet serieus worden genomen”.
Uit een latere publicatie bleek dat het huis dat Knops op de grond wilde bouwen, groter was dan volgens gemeentelijke regels was toegestaan. Ondanks een negatief ambtelijk advies besloten wethouders interne regels te schrappen om de grotere woning mogelijk te maken. Meer dan een jaar nadat Knops zo zijn woning kon bouwen, werd deze mogelijkheid formeel in het gemeentebeleid opgenomen. Maar ook hier was van persoonlijke bevoordeling geen sprake, vond Knops. „De gemeente liep vooruit op nieuw beleid om langgevelwoningen terug te brengen in het gebied.”
Knops wil dat de rechter verklaart dat de „beschuldigingen van bevoordeling” onrechtmatig zijn. Ook moeten de kranten en journalisten een verbod krijgen de beschuldigingen nog te uiten „ongeacht de wijze waarop de beschuldiging wordt geformuleerd en ongeacht de plaats waar de beschuldiging wordt geuit.” Uitspraak verwacht op 29 juni.
If you’ve followed the diplomacy over Ukraine closely, you may have noticed that the Biden administration has relied heavily on CIA Director William J. (Bill) Burns. In November it dispatched him to Moscow where, according to CNN, he served as a “key intermediary” between the US and Vladimir Putin. In January he flew to Germany to discuss Ukraine with the new government in Berlin. This all makes sense. Burns is the Biden administration’s highest-ranking Russia expert. He’s a fluent Russian speaker who has served twice in the US embassy in Moscow, the second time as ambassador. Which makes it all the more striking that Burns, in his memoir, flatly contradicts the Biden administration’s narrative about how this crisis came to be.
Remarkably, one of the most trenchant critics of official US discourse on Russia and Ukraine is the sitting director of the CIA. To
hear the Biden administration tell it, the Ukraine crisis is the product of one man: Vladimir Putin. Putin fears that if Ukraine joins NATO and becomes a pro-Western democracy, Russians will want the same for themselves and thus rise up against his tyrannical rule. The idea that Russians genuinely think NATO poses a security threat is transparent bunk.
The Biden narrative isn’t entirely false. Putin surely does fear that a democratic, pro-Western Ukraine could inspire popular uprisings in his country. But it is partially false because it suggests that were Putin not in power, Russia’s government would have no problem with Ukraine joining NATO. And it implies that the US bears no responsibility for the current standoff. According to Bill Burns, Biden’s own CIA Director, neither of those claims are true.
Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
While the Biden administration claims that Putin bears all the blame for the current Ukraine crisis, Burns makes clear that the US helped lay its foundations. By taking advantage of Russian weakness, he argues, Washington fueled the nationalist resentment that Putin exploits today. Burns calls the Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” And he describes the appetite for revenge it fostered among many in Moscow during Boris Yeltsin’s final years as Russia’s president. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage,” Burns writes, “a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades.”
As the Bush administration moved toward opening NATO’s doors to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about a Russian backlash grew even starker. He told Rice it was “hard to overstate the strategic consequences” of offering NATO membership to Ukraine and predicted that “it will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.” Although Burns couldn’t have predicted the specific kind of meddling Putin would employ—either in 2014 when he seized Crimea and fomented a rebellion in Ukraine’s east or today—he warned that the US was helping set in motion the kind of crisis that America faces today. Promise Ukraine membership in NATO, he wrote, and “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.”
Were a reporter to read Burns’ quotes to White House press secretary Jen Psaki today, she’d likely accuse them of “parroting Russian talking points.” But Burns is hardly alone. From inside the US government, many officials warned that US policy toward Russia might bring disaster. William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary from 1994 to 1997, almost resigned because of his opposition to NATO expansion. He has since declared that because of its policies in the 1990s, “the United States deserves much of the blame” for the deterioration in relations with Moscow. Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 served as US ambassador to Ukraine, has called Bush’s 2008 decision to declare that Ukraine would eventually join NATO “a real mistake.” Fiona Hill, who gained fame during the Trump impeachment saga, says that as national intelligence officers for Russia and Eurasia she and her colleagues “warned” Bush that “Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”
Burns’ criticisms of past US policy toward Russia and Ukraine don’t mean he opposes Biden’s policy today. He may believe that while pushing NATO expansion helped bring about the current standoff, it would be a mistake to pull back from it now—at the point of a Russian gun. Until his next memoir, we’ll likely never know. But Burns’ criticisms are crucial nonetheless because they expose a fallacy in the current debate. Hawks say that if you criticize US policy toward Russia you’re whitewashing Putin’s aggression. What Burns shows is that it’s possible to recognize Putin’s malevolence while also recognizing that the US, by repeatedly humiliating Russia when it was weak, made it more likely that a figure like him would arise and seek to settle old scores. The US has a habit of this: By abandoning the Iran deal, for instance, and discrediting the Iranian moderates who negotiated it, the US helped ensure the election of Ebrahim Raisi, a brutal hardliner. Obviously, America’s power over what happens in other nations is limited. But the message of Biden’s CIA Director is that we haven’t wielded it as wisely as we could.
Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown
Exclusive: Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns
The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows.
The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital.
The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades, while recent price rises led BP’s boss to describe the company as a “cash machine”.
The lure of colossal payouts in the years to come appears to be irresistible to the oil companies, despite the world’s climate scientists stating in February that further delay in cutting fossil fuel use would mean missing our last chance “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders in April: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us.”
Details of the projects being planned are not easily accessible but an investigation published in the Guardian shows:
The fossil fuel industry’s short-term expansion plans involve the start of oil and gas projects that will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to a decade of CO2 emissions from China, the world’s biggest polluter.
These plans include 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have already started pumping.
The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to well under 2C.
The Middle East and Russia often attract the most attention in relation to future oil and gas production but the US, Canada and Australiaare among the countries with the biggest expansion plans and the highest number of carbon bombs. The US, Canada and Australia also give some of the world’s biggest subsidies for fossil fuels per capita.
The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend every day for the rest of the decade
$103m
At the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in November, after a quarter-century of annual negotiations that as yet have failed to deliver a fall in global emissions, countries around the world finally included the word “coal” in their concluding decision.
Even this belated mention of the dirtiest fossil fuel was fraught, leaving a “deeply sorry” Cop president, Alok Sharma, fighting back tears on the podium after India announced a last-minute softening of the need to “phase out coal” to “phase down coal”.
Nonetheless, the world agreed coal power was history – the question now was how quickly cheaper renewables could replace it, and how fair the transition would be for the small number of developing countries that still relied on it.
But there was no mention of oil and gas in the Cop26 final deal, despite these being responsible for almost 60% of fossil fuel emissions.
Furthermore, many of the rich countries, such as the US, that dominate international climate diplomacy and positioned themselves as climate leaders at the conference, are big players in new oil and gas projects. But unlike India, they avoided criticism.
That lack of scrutiny prompted the Guardian to spend the months since Cop26 piecing together the clearest picture possible of forthcoming oil and gas exploration and production.
Code red
The world’s scientists agree the planet is in deep trouble. In August, Guterres reacted strongly to a stark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate science. “[This report] is a code red for humanity,” he said.
The IPCC states carbon emissions must fall by half by 2030 to preserve the chance of a liveable future, yet they show no sign of declining.
“Simply put, they are lying and the results will be catastrophic,” said Guterres. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”
Today, the problem is even more acute. A better understanding of the devastating impacts of the climate crisis has led to the internationally agreed limit for global heating being lowered to 1.5C, to cut the risks of extreme heatwaves, droughts, and floods.
“Simply put, they are lying, and the results will be catastrophic,” he said. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
The failure of countries to “build back greener” after the Covid-19 pandemic or the 2008 financial crash was not a good omen, and Guterres said: “Fossil fuel interests are now cynically using the war in Ukraine to lock in a high-carbon future.”
Assessing future oil and gas developments is challenging: the sector is complex and often secretive, public information is scarce and hard to find and assess. But a global team of Guardian environment reporters has worked with leading thinktanks, analysts and academics across the world over the past five months and now we can answer a series of questions that reveal the scale of the sector’s plans.
First, how much production is due to come from the projects that are likely to start drilling before the end of this crucial decade?
Next, where exactly are the biggest projects around the world, the so-called carbon bombs that would explode the climate?
We also followed the money: how much is going to be spent on oil and gas that cannot be burned safely, rather than invested in clean energy? And who benefits most from the fossil fuel subsidies that hide the true damage they cause?
The answers to these key questions lead to an inescapable conclusion: if the projects go ahead, they will blow the world’s rapidly shrinking cap on emissions that must be kept to enable a liveable future – known as the carbon budget.
For all the promises made by many oil companies, the data shows they remain committed to their core business despite the consequences.
Plans to expand
The short-term expansion plans of oil and gas companies, such as ExxonMobil and Gazprom, are colossal. The Guardian’s investigation has found that in the next seven or so years, they are likely to start producing oil and gas from projects that would ultimately deliver 192bn barrels, the equivalent of a decade of today’s emissions from China.
This estimate was provided by analysts at Urgewald, who used data from Rystad Energy, the industry standard source but not publicly available.
Their Gogel database includes 887 companies that explore for and produce oil and gas, and covers 97% of short-term expansion plans.
The companies have made a final financial commitment to projects that will deliver 116bn barrels, more than half of the 192bn barrel total.
They have also invested heavily in the rest, including final development, engineering and operation plans. Such investment makes these projects likely to go ahead, barring drastic government action, Urgewald says.
Companies have already made their final financial commitment to projects that will deliver 116bn barrels of oil
116bn
A third of the short-term expansion plans of oil and gas would come from “unconventional” and riskier sources. These include fracking and ultra-deep offshore drilling, which are inherently more dangerous – as the oil and gas companies drill deeper, the number of spills, injuries and blowouts increase.
The 192bn barrels are split roughly 50:50 between liquids, including crude oil, and gas. Burning this would produce 73bn tonnes of CO2. But methane routinely leaks from gas operations and is a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping 86 times more heat than CO2 over 20 years. Including this impact, at a standard supply-chain leak rate of 2.3%, means the equivalent of 97bn tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere and driving us faster towards climate hell.
State oil companies lead the Urgewald short-term expansion list, with Qatar Energy, Russia’s Gazprom and Saudi Aramco the top three. Half of Gazprom’s projected expansion is in the fragile Arctic, though the long-term implications of Russia’s war in Ukraine on its fossil fuel plans remain to be seen.
The listed oil majors ExxonMobil, Total, Chevron, Shell and BP are all in the top 10. Unconventional and risky oil and gas production accounts for about 70% of the US majors’ totals, while the proportion of fracking and ultra-deep water ranges from 30% to 60% for the European companies.
“Most oil and gas companies are just proceeding with business as usual,” Nils Bartsch at Urgewald said. “Some just do not care. Some do not see their responsibility because governments around the world let them proceed, although of course these governments are often influenced by the industry.”
Two-thirds of the 116bn barrels of oil and gas projects companies are financially committed to are in the Middle East, Russia and North America, according to data provided by Rystad Energy.
Australia is anticipated to be a big contributor with 3.4bn barrels, more than from the whole of Europe, where fields are relatively depleted.
A separate analysis for the Guardian by Urgewald on the average annual investment in oil and gas exploration over the past three years shows that, along with Shell, three large but rarely scrutinised Chinese companies occupy the top four slots: PetroChina, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, and Sinopec. Seven of the top 10 of these explorers are relying on fracking, ultra-deep water Arctic and tar sands developments for more than half of their expansion.
Carbon bombs
Daniel Ribeiro has been fighting plans for a massive offshore pipeline and liquefied natural gas plant in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique, since it was mooted more than 15 years ago.
The scheme, which would lead to a huge increase in carbon emissions in one of the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries, is backed by more than £1bn from the UK government and has some of the biggest oil and gas corporations circling, scenting another huge payday.
Research shared exclusively with the Guardian has identified the development in Cabo Delgado will drive catastrophic climate breakdown around the world
“It is already creating a massive amount of disruption for the local fishing and subsistence farmers who are being moved off their land,” said Ribeiro, from the local Justiça Ambiental campaign group. “But if it goes ahead and countries like Mozambique are set off on a fossil fuel track, it will be a global disaster. We can forget tackling the climate crisis … we will all suffer.”
Research shared exclusively with the Guardian has identified the Cabo Delgado development as one of 195 carbon bombs, which – unless stopped – will drive catastrophic climate breakdown around the world.
The term carbon bomb has been widely used in climate circles for the past decade to describe large fossil fuel projects or other big sources of carbon. The new research sets a specific definition: projects capable of pumping at least 1bn tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes.
Projects identified include the new drilling wells springing up in the Canadian wilderness as part of the vast Montney Play oil and gas development, and the huge North Field gas fields in Qatar – named in the study as the biggest new oil and gas carbon bomb in the world.
The study, led by Kjell Kühne from the University of Leeds in the UK and due to be published in the journal Energy Policy, found that just a few months after many of the world’s politicians positioned themselves as climate leaders during the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, they were giving the green light to a massive global expansion of oil and gas production that scientists warn would push civilisation to the brink.
Asad Rehman, a leading climate justice activist in the UK who was at the forefront of a global network of indigenous activists and civil society campaigners in Glasgow, accused the US, Canada and Australia of “rank hypocrisy”.
“These countries are single-handedly undermining efforts to curtail global emissions and ignoring their responsibility to phase out fossil fuels rapidly and justly.” He said it was the poorest and most vulnerable who were suffering.
Together these projects would produce 646 GtCO2 emissions, swallowing up the world’s entire carbon budget
646Gt
“Only the colonial mindset of political leaders in rich countries can make the brutal calculation that the interest of fossil fuel giants and their billions in profit is more important than the lives of people who are overwhelmingly black, brown and poor.”
Together these projects would produce 646bn tonnes of CO2 emissions, the study says, swallowing the world’s entire carbon budget. More than 60% of these schemes are already operating.
Kühne, the director of the Leave it in the Ground Initiative, said in the first instance, the 40% of projects that had not yet started production must be stopped if the world was to avoid sliding ever more quickly towards catastrophe, adding they should be a prominent focus of the global climate protest movement in the months and years ahead.
“The oil and gas industry is continuing to plan these huge projects, even in the face of a burning planet. The ambitious targets of the Paris agreement were apparently not enough to make them question their business case. These carbon bombs are the single biggest indicator that we are not trying hard enough.”
The study is based on data from Rystad Energy but, rather than focusing on total barrels, it identifies the mega projects potentially responsible for the biggest emissions.
According to the research, the US is the leading source of potential emissions. Its 22 carbon bombs include conventional drilling and fracking, and span the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the foothills of the Front Range in Colorado to the Permian basin. Together they have the potential to emit 140bn tonnes of CO2, almost four times more than the entire world emits each year.
Saudi Arabia is the second biggest potential emitter after the US, with 107bn tonnes, followed by Russia, Qatar, Iraq, Canada, China and Brazil.
Australia, widely condemned by international leaders as a laggard in addressing the climate crisis, ranks 16th.
Robyn Churnside, a Ngarluma elder on the Burrup peninsula in remote north-west Australia, has been fighting fossil fuel and mining developments since the 1970s. She is part of a campaign trying to stop Woodside’s US$12bn Scarborough gas project, one of the biggest fossil fuel developments in the country in a decade.
Churnside said dissenting Indigenous voices were too often ignored when decisions were made about new oil and gas infrastructure that could lock in emissions for decades and desecrate culturally significant sites, which in some cases had stood for tens of thousands of years.
“It’s about time the world listened to First Nations people because we have been here a long, long time,” she said. “Our spirit in this land will never rest. It needs protection.”
Prof Kevin Anderson, from the Tyndall Centre of Climate Research, University of Manchester and Uppsala University, Sweden, said the scale of planned production in the face of all the evidence suggested big oil and its political supporters either did not believe the climate science or thought their extreme wealth could somehow protect them and their children from the devastating consequences.
“Either the scientists have spent 30 years working on this issue and have got it all wrong – the big oil CEOs know better – or, behind a veil of concern, they have complete disregard for the more climate vulnerable communities, typically poor, people of colour and far away from their lives. Equally worrying, they are disinterested in their own children’s future.”
The money
When BP reported its quarterly earnings in a presentation to financial institutions in February, one analyst said he “really enjoyed the camaraderie and the positivity that you’re generating”, before asking about the company’s cash position.
“We’ve given you a lovely little chart,” said Murray Auchincloss, BP’s chief financial officer. “Certainly, it’s possible that we’re getting more cash than we know what to do with. For now, I’m going to be conservative and manage the company as if it’s $40 [a barrel] oil. Anything we could get above that just helps, obviously.” At the time, the oil price exceeded $90; today it is $106.
The oil industry is awash with cash. The money companies have belongs to shareholders, including pension funds, or in the case of national oil companies, to governments and, in theory at least, citizens. But the investment plans of the biggest oil companies are sharply at odds with the goal of halting the climate crisis.
Data obtained by the Guardian from the thinktank Carbon Tracker shows a dozen of the world’s biggest companies are on track to commit a collective $387m dollars a day of capital expenditure to exploiting oil and gas fields through to 2030.
A significant portion of this is for maintaining production at existing projects - some oil and gas will still be needed as the world weans itself off fossil fuels – but the exact amount is not publicly available. Nonetheless, it is clear that at least a quarter of this investment – $103m a day – is for oil and gas that cannot be burned if the worst impacts of the climate crisis are to be avoided, money that could instead be spent ramping up clean energy.
Even more worryingly, the companies have developed further project options that might lead them to spend an additional $84m a day that would not even be compatible with a devastating 2.7C of global heating.
The world’s governments agreed in the Paris climate accord to limit global heating to well below 2C, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5C. For the latter, stricter goal, no new oil and gas projects are possible.
The Carbon Tracker data, compiled in September, uses a temperature of 1.65C to represent the well below 2C target and finds that 27% of the companies’ projected investments are incompatible with this.
In terms of the most dangerous investments – those that could help drive temperatures beyond 2.7C – Gazprom accounts for $17m a day of this, ExxonMobil $12m, Shell $11m and PetroChina $9m.
If governments act on the scientific advice to rapidly reduce carbon emissions by boosting clean energy and cutting fossil fuel burning, the companies would have to write off these colossal sums as losses, hitting shareholders, pension funds and public finances. If governments do not act, the companies could cash in as the world burns.
Overall, the international oil companies are making the biggest bets, with almost 40% of their projected investments incompatible with 1.65C. ExxonMobil is particularly high, at 56%. The national oil company average is 17%, although 56% of Petrobras’s planned capital expenditure is incompatible with 1.65C.
“Companies that continue to develop projects based on business-as-usual demand are betting on the failure of policy action on climate and underestimating the disruptive potential of new technologies, such as renewables and battery storage,” said Mike Coffin at Carbon Tracker. “Such projects are either not needed or they lead to warming well in excess of Paris goals.”
A separate recent analysis based on Rystad Energy data from April, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, found that 20 of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies remained on course to spend huge sums – $932bn – by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields.
Freeing the world from the grip of fossil fuels is made far harder by huge ongoing subsidies for the fuels, making them far cheaper than their true cost when the damage they cause is included – especially air pollution, which kills 7 million people a year. The G20 group of leading economies pledged in 2009 to phase out the subsidies but little has been achieved.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in direct financial support is received by the producers and consumers of fossil fuels every year – but they benefit from far larger subsidies by not paying for the harm burning fossil fuels causes. When the damage from the climate crisis and air pollution is accounted for, the fossil fuel subsidies reach $6tn a year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Guardian analysis shows this is equivalent to $11m a minute globally, $4m a minute in China and more than $1m in the US.
Guardian analysis of more detailed IMF data shows drivers in the US, Canada and Australia, along with Saudi Arabia, are the world’s biggest beneficiaries of subsidies for road fuels, with some governments under pressure to increase these during the current energy crisis.
The per capita subsidy for petrol and diesel across the population of Saudi Arabia was more than $1,000 a year in 2020. In the US, the road fuel subsidy per capita is $644 and about $500 in both Canada and Australia.
Japan and Germany also appear in the top 10 of the road fuel analysis, which focused on the 54 large countries with more than 25 million people and that account for 90% of global population and subsidies. The UK per capita subsidy for road fuels was only $10 a year, indicating taxes on petrol and diesel in 2020 were close to the level of the damage burning the fuels causes.
The US is also high on the list of the biggest per capita subsidies for all fossil fuels with $2,000 a year, behind only Saudi Arabia ($4,550) and Russia ($3,560). After these countries, only Iran ($1815) is ahead of Australia ($1730) and Canada ($1690).
“Taking the Paris agreement seriously requires a rapid shift away from fossil fuels,” said Simon Black, a climate economist at the IMF. “Getting fossil fuel prices right will help enormously in accelerating this transition.”
The transition
The shift from burning oil and gas cannot happen overnight, and a declining amount will still need to be burned during the transition to a net zero emissions global economy in 2050. The question is whether companies and governments are moving fast enough.
The Guardian wrote to the oil and gas companies named in its analysis and asked for their response.
“Under the IEA net zero emissions scenario, and all Paris-aligned scenarios, all energy sources remain important through 2050, and oil and natural gas remain essential components of the energy mix,” said a spokesperson for ExxonMobil.
However, the role of oil and gas would be vastly reduced in 2050, and the IEA said: “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development [in our net zero scenario].”
ExxonMobil planned to invest more than $15bn on initiatives to lower greenhouse gas emissions over the next six years, the spokesperson said, including carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels. The company aimed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 but only from its own operations, not the fuels it sold, therefore covering only a small fraction of the emissions from the oil and gas it sells.
A spokesperson for Shell cited recent company statements: “As a result of [our] planned level of capital investment, we expect a gradual decline of about 1-2% a year in total oil production through to 2030, including divestments.”
“The world is in a race against time,” said Guterres. “It’s time to end fossil fuel subsidies and stop the expansion of oil and gas exploration.”
“By 2025, Shell expects its expenditure on [low and zero-carbon] products and services across its businesses will have increased to around 50% of its total expenditure,” a recent report by the firm states. In 2022, the proportion is expected to be more than 35%. In 2021, “Shell achieved its annual investment targets in renewables and energy solutions of $2bn-3bn”, the report says.
ConocoPhillips also cited a recently published net zero emissions plan: “Our goal is to support an orderly transition that matches supply to demand and focuses on returns on, and of, capital while safely and responsibly delivering affordable energy.”
The document states that profits from oil and gas projects are significantly higher than from investments in renewable energy.
ConocoPhillips has allocated $200m in 2022 to reduce emissions from its operations. To reduce emissions from the burning of the fossil fuels it supplies, the company advocates an “economy-wide price on carbon that would help shift consumer demand from high-carbon to low-carbon energy sources”.
“Petrobras plans its investments considering that the Paris agreement will be successful and global temperature will be kept below 2°C,” a spokesperson for the company said. “Oil will remain important in the coming decades, even in accelerated transition scenarios.”
The spokesperson said the IEA’s scenario for 1.65C indicated some investment in upstream projects was needed. “We are planning for highly resilient assets competitive in scenarios aligned with Paris due to their low production cost and low emissions. Petrobras is following its strategy of maximising the value of its portfolio, [with 99% of the investment on exploration] focusing on deepwater and ultra-deepwater assets.”
TotalEnergies pointed to its recent sustainability report, which it said “showed our stakeholders that we are already on the right track”. The company has a target of a 30% cut in emissions from oil and gas sales by 2030 and to increase the proportion of its energy sales that are renewable from 9% in 2021 to 20% in 2030.
Saudi Aramco and Eni responded to the Guardian but declined to comment. The other companies did not respond to the Guardian’s request.
Race against time
The Guardian’s investigation has provided an answer to the question of how great a danger the plans of oil and gas companies pose to the climate.
But there is another set of questions, those for politicians and governments, that will ultimately affect the course of the climate emergency.
Will the world’s governments act to close the book on the oil companies’ giant climate gamble? Will richer countries, historically most responsible for emissions, support a just transition for developing countries on the frontline of the escalating crisis?
Would strong, immediate action lead to a financial crash, as billions of dollars are wiped off the value of some of the world’s biggest companies? Or will more steady but concerted action wean us off fossil fuels rapidly, close the oil companies’ cash machine and lead us into a clean energy future with a liveable climate? Only time will tell. But, unlike oil and gas, time is in very short supply.
“The world is in a race against time,” said Guterres. “It is time to end fossil fuel subsidies and stop the expansion of oil and gas exploration.”
Reflecting on the war in Ukraine, he said: “Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use. This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction.”
Additional reporting by Jillian Ambrose, Adam Morton, Nina Lakhani, Oliver Milman and Chris McGreal.
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