Some people claim that reducing oil/gas production won't help the climate because demand is fixed and other countries will increase production to compensate. A 2024 paper shows this is false: Reducing production reduces emissions by ~half the lifecycle emissions of the oil/gas left in the ground. - ThreadSky

kevinjkircher.com • 2 days ago

Some people claim that reducing oil/gas production won't help the climate because demand is fixed and other countries will increase production to compensate. A 2024 paper shows this is false: Reducing production reduces emissions by ~half the lifecycle emissions of the oil/gas left in the ground.

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yungenchee.bsky.social•2 days ago

📌

kevinjkircher.com•2 days ago

This implies that the US could reduce CO2 emissions by about half a gigaton per year simply by ramping down oil and gas exports, which increased sharply under Obama, Trump, and Biden. For reference, US economy-wide domestic emissions are about 6.3 gigatons per year.

nafnlaus.bsky.social•2 days ago

That's not what your linked paper claims. It says that eliminating *high-intensity oil sands* production could cut half the emissions of said oil. In some cases, it can even *increase* emissions.

Since little US-produced crude is from oil sands, it's not an argument.

nafnlaus.bsky.social•2 days ago

Also, the numbers are weird. Canada's *mean* oil sands CO2 intensity was under 0,4t/m3:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-05/canada-s-oil-sands-emissions-intensity-falls-for-sixth-year

... aka 63kgCO₂e/boe, vs. their claimed 650. Regardless, the oilsands “fits well within the range of carbon intensity of oil and gas we see in the world”.

kevinjkircher.com•2 days ago

In 99% of their Monte Carlo simulations, reducing production reduces emissions. On average, reductions are about 40-50% of the lifecycle emissions of the oil/gas left in the ground.

You're right that emission reductions are biggest when reducing production of the dirtiest oil types.

nafnlaus.bsky.social•2 days ago

I just think their premises are awful to begin with.They average 21 demand and 9 supply elasticity studies, some of which are *decades* old. You can't do that, these things are constantly changing - including, critically, their focus on bitumen re: supply and EVs re: demand.

nafnlaus.bsky.social•2 days ago

Here'a s plot of the demand elasticity. There is a *strong* trend, with demand being *dramatically* less elastic in recent years, particularly within the peer-reviewed research.

As for supply, not only is the research dated, but it's too few datapoints anyway.

nafnlaus.bsky.social•2 days ago

The assumption that the marginal barrel is the average barrel is, quite simply wrong. Full stop. End of discussion. You cannot just simply random sample from among the supply.

Contrary to its assumptions, the market is not a single globally fungible pool. Refineries are designed for different...

kevinjkircher.com•2 days ago

Caculation details:

For oil, 9 EJ * 1e9 GJ/EJ * 1/6 boe/GJ * 0.43 tonnes/boe = 645 million tonnes

For gas, 8.5 EJ * 9.5e9 therm/EJ * 0.0053 tonnes/therm = 405 million tonnes

(645 + 405)/2 = 525 million tonnes of avoidable CO2 emissions from US oil and gas exports

Emission factors from EPA.

kevinjkircher.com•2 days ago

Ramping down US oil and gas exports would also decouple US energy prices from global markets, likely making energy much more afforfable for US households.

cianc.bsky.social•6 hours ago

I'm not sure this paper can be applied to gas as well as oil since the authors note that "Modeling the curtailment of gas supply raises other issues that are beyond the scope of this paper, such as the interaction between gas and coal demand."

kevinjkircher.com•6 hours ago

That's a good point, thanks.

cianc.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Nice paper, thanks for sharing. As a non-economist I had kind of assumed that market leakage was 100% in many cases, and the fact that it almost never is is making me rethink some things around other kinds of consumption.

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