Australia should adopt US policies to attract fossil fuel dollars, says chief of ‘carbon major' Chevron

The Guardian

7 hours ago

The boss of Chevron, one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies that reported earnings of $9bn in the last six months, has had a few gripes about Australia that he wanted to get off his chest.
In an 'exclusive' interview with The Australian this weekend, the company's chief executive Mike Wirth argued he wanted Australia to be more like the US and the Middle East – and, if it was, then it would be in a better position to compete for fossil fuel investment dollars.
Wirth revealed he had come from a private meeting with the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, where he reportedly laid out why he thought Australia should be more like the US or the Middle East.
The page one lead story came with a picture of Wirth perched on a leather couch and staring imperiously down the lens.
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When readers got to the bottom of the story that continued on page two, there was a disclosure that reporter, Perry Williams, The Australian's chief business correspondent, had 'travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Chevron'.
There were no other voices canvassed in the 950-word story, no mention of the climate crisis or the company's record on greenhouse emissions.
Perhaps it could be said in one sentence – such as this one – why Australia might not want to have aspirations to be one of the Middle East's authoritarian petrostates?
But why might the US be a better place for the company to drill for oil and gas than Australia? What is it, exactly, that Australia should be aspiring to?
Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has been making life easier for companies like Chevron by cutting regulation.
This is how the EPA's administrator, Lee Zeldin, described the 'greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen' when some of the changes were outlined in March.
'We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the US and more,' Zeldin said.
There are some very strong Tony Abbott-era climate science denial vibes right there.
Trump has previously described global heating as a hoax and is pulling the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement. His administration also wants to rescind the so-called 'endangerment finding' – an Obama-era ruling that gives the US government authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions because of the climate crisis.
An online portal that held two decades of climate assessments has also been yanked by the Trump administration.
To try to justify all these rollbacks, the US Department of Energy last week released a report it had commissioned from a set of scientists known for their contrarian views on climate change.
Climate scientists have counted what they say are more than 100 false or misleading claims in the report.
So, apparently Australia should aspire to be more like a country that is in the process of cleansing itself of any scientific facts its president doesn't like.
Wirth reportedly complained the company's costs had gone up in Australia because of legal challenges to projects from environment groups, rules that mean contractors have to be paid the same as employees if they are doing the same job and changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.
Chevron has never paid PRRT, but will be liable for payments this year, the company has said, after changes brought in by Labor.
It might be worth mentioning that when Chevron spoke to a Senate inquiry last year about changes to the PRRT, the company said: 'Our view on the proposed changes, as outlined in the bill, is that they are proportionate and will not curtail future investment.'
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Alex Hillman, lead analyst at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said Chevron's problems were not that Australia was 'uncompetitive' but that its business model was facing 'increasing headwinds'.
'The biggest obstacle for fossil fuel companies like Chevron is not government regulation, but that renewables are increasingly out-competing LNG on cost and offering real energy security for emerging markets,' he said.
As well as getting the page one treatment, and an endorsement in the paper's editorial, Chevron also got to defend its failing Gorgon carbon capture project in a lead story in the paper's business section on Monday.
That story also came with the disclosure that the reporter had 'travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Chevron'.
What is there to say about Chevron's climate record that didn't make it into The Australian's reporting?
In Australia, Chevron's LNG plant at Gorgon in Western Australia is the biggest emitting project in the country, and has received the equivalent of millions of dollars in tradable carbon credits under the government's safeguard mechanism.
Chevron is known as a 'carbon major' because of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from its current and historical operations.
According to a database of historical emissions, Chevron has been responsible for the release of more greenhouse gases than any other independently owned entity (there are three entities that have emitted more than Chevron since the 1850s – Saudi Aramco, China and the former Soviet Union).
Chevron has targets to lower the emissions intensity of its oil and gas – that is, reducing the amount of CO2 and methane released during extraction and refining.
But a fossil fuel company can still meet an emissions intensity target (for which it could claim, as Chevron does, that it is producing 'lower carbon' energy) while its overall emissions from the extraction, transport, refinement and ultimate burning of its products are going up.
Groups advocating for climate action have consistently criticised Chevron for its climate targets and its stated goal to 'grow our oil and gas business'.
A report from Oil Change International said Chevron was 'dangerously out of step with climate goals'.
The company itself claims its future business strategy can still exist in a future where demand for fossil fuels declines and governments try to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.