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Oil and gas: keep it in the ground

Oil and gas pollute our lands, oceans and air, and fuel climate change. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we need to keep most of these dirty fuels in the ground. Yet powerful oil and gas companies keep pushing to tap dirtier, riskier and costlier sources: drilling in the Arctic, mining tar sands, and fracking shale oil and gas. Greenpeace is fighting back. We stand up for our coasts, our communities and our climate. We show polluting oil and gas have no future in the clean, safe and secure 100 percent renewable energy system we must have.

Oil — time to leave it behind

The last thing the world needs is more oil. Producing oil harms the environment, wildlife and people. Burning oil for energy, including transport, fuels climate change and chokes our cities with air pollution, making us sick.

The damage gets worse as companies tap oil sources that are dirtier, costlier and riskier to extract and refine, including highly-polluting mining of Canada's tar sands.

Supported by billions of dollars globally in tax breaks and subsidies, this dirty industry pollutes and profits at our expense.

At the same time, some fossil fuel companies spent millions to sow uncertainty and doubt about climate change science.

Drilling means spilling

The industry's global track record shows that where oil is drilled, blowouts and oil spills are a fact of life. Spills sicken and kill and are especially disastrous in water, where it's extremely rare to recover more than 20 percent of the oil spilled.

Arctic at risk

In the harsh but fragile Arctic environment, this spill clean-up rate is even worse, posing intolerable risks to the pristine polar environment and the millions of people who depend on it.

The terrible irony is that the oil industry is trying to drill in the melting Arctic to find more of the fossil fuels that are causing sea ice to vanish in the first place.

Greenpeace strongly opposes drilling for oil in the icy waters of the Arctic. It would unleash still more global warming and pollution. It would also further threaten vulnerable and little-understood ecosystems, the people who rely on them, and the unique polar species they support, such as narwhal and polar bears.

Gas — emissions and leaks fuel global warming

Like oil, burning gas (also called natural gas) produces greenhouse gas emissions, fuelling climate change.  

Unburned gas is also a big problem when it escapes. Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.  (Methane is 84 times as powerful are carbon dioxide at disrupting the climate over a given 20-year period.)

Leaks and releases occur all through the natural gas supply chain. No one is sure exactly how much leaks, but where carefully measured, actual leaks can turn out to be significantly higher than government estimates.

Fracking and its dangers

Changes to technology have led to a rapid increase in fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing. Fossil fuel companies use fracking to break apart rock formations deep underground and extract oil and gas (also called shale oil or shale gas). Its high risks explain why public outrage has led to more and more bans on fracking.

Toxic water time bombs

When they frack, oil and gas companies lace massive amounts of water with "fracking fluid" chemicals, which are often toxic, and put massive pressures on this fluid when it is deep underground. Fracking can compete for water supplies where water is in short supply,

In the USA, the EPA has found many sites where fracking and shale drilling polluted groundwater. What is more, once fracking is done, huge volumes of contaminated water are left — creating a huge toxic waste challenge.  For disposal, the industry injects this contaminated water underground, a practice linked to an increase in earthquakes.

On top of that, some fracking wells in the USA have led to tremendous spikes in air pollution, and to methane leaks into the air, where it intensifies global warming.

What is Greenpeace doing?

Greenpeace is working planet-wide to speed up the shift away from dirty fossil fuels: oil, gas and coal.

The latest updates

 

Gazprom begins first production at Arctic 30 oil platform

Press release | 20 December, 2013 at 17:43

Amsterdam, 20 December 2013 - Russian oil giant Gazprom today announced it has produced the first commercial quantities of oil from its controversial Arctic drilling platform Prirazlomnaya in the remote waters of the Pechora Sea. In response,...

'Arctic 30' being moved from Murmansk to St. Petersburg

Press release | 1 November, 2013 at 17:03

Amsterdam, 1 November 2013 - Greenpeace International understands from diplomatic sources that the thirty men and women detained by Russia following a peaceful protest against an Arctic oil platform are being moved from a detention centre in...

Russian Authorities fail to lift piracy charges against Arctic 30

Press release | 1 November, 2013 at 11:15

Amsterdam, 1 November 2013 - Prosecuting authorities in Russia were under fire today after it was revealed that they have failed to lift charges of piracy against the Arctic 30, despite pledging to do so.

Greenpeace International activist charged with hooliganism

Press release | 24 October, 2013 at 19:19

Amsterdam, 24 October 2013 – Russian authorities today formally charged a Greenpeace International activist with hooliganism, a crime that carries a maximum seven year jail term and has been described by the European Parliament as a threat to...

Greenpeace International responds to hooliganism charge

Press release | 23 October, 2013 at 21:18

Amsterdam, 23 October 2013 - Commenting on reports that piracy charges against the Arctic 30 are to be dropped and replaced with a charge of hooliganism, Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia said:

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