* For a factbox of Big Oil's climate targets, see
* European companies ahead of U.S. peers
* Targets are not easy to compare
(Updates March 2 story to add Eni graphic, no changes to text)
By Shadia Nasralla and Ron Bousso
LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) - Europe's top oil and gas
companies, which account for roughly 7% of global crude
consumption, have committed themselves to greenhouse gas
emission reduction targets which vary in scope, timelines and
detail, making them hard for investors to compare.
And what does this mean, say, for the carbon footprint of a
car driver at petrol station?
If we take BP as an example, emissions from its own
barrels, from wellhead to passenger car exhaust, amount to
around 415 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.
BP says it will reduce these emissions - roughly the same as
Britain's annual emissions - to net zero by 2050.
The net zero target does not cover crude and refined
products that BP trades but which are initially brought out of
the ground by other producers, a total which is much larger than
the oil and gas BP produces itself. It says it aims to halve the
carbon density of all energy that it trades by 2050.
BP's peer Royal Dutch Shell, has also pledged to
halve the carbon intensity of products it trades by 2050. An
intensity-based target allows for absolute emissions to go up if
volumes sold go up.
Equinor has also pledged to halve the intensity of
the energy products it produces and sells by 2050, but its
methodology is based on its equity oil and gas output, rather
than every drop of fuel it sells.
Eni, conversely, committed to cut its absolute emissions
from all products it sells by 80% and said its oil output would
shrink from 2025.
All these targets depend at least partially on offsets,
whose availability is finite, and carbon capture and storage, a
technology not currently deployed at commercial scale.
Still, European oil and gas producers' climate ambitions are
way ahead of their U.S. peers ExxonMobil, Chevron
and ConocoPhillips.
