Research

Oil Change International publishes upwards of 20 reports and briefings every year focused on supporting the movement for a just phase-out of fossil fuels.

In the Pipeline: Risks for Funders of Tar Sands Pipelines

A new report exposes the huge financial risks behind three major Canadian tar sands pipeline project proposals: Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion, TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Enbridge’s Line 3 expansion.

Financing Climate Disaster: How Export Credit Agencies Are a Boon for Oil and Gas

The U.S. Export-Import Bank (USEXIM) is the third-largest supporter of fossil fuels among all G20 countries, according to a new report out today from Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth U.S., and WWF's European Policy Office.

Banking on Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2017

Big banks’ business as usual is killing the climate. From 2014 to 2016, big banks around the world poured $290 billion into extreme fossil fuel companies and failed to respect human rights.

Unequal Exchange: How Taxpayers Shoulder the Burden of Fossil Fuel Development on Federal Lands

A new report examines the extensive support for fossil fuel production on public lands and waters, provided by the U.S. government to the fossil fuel industry through a combination of direct subsidies, enforcement loopholes, lax royalty collection, and stagnant lease rates.

Climate on the Line: Why New Tar Sands Pipelines Are Incompatible With the Paris Goals

New analysis finds that Canada will be the world’s second highest contributor of new oil production globally over the next twenty years if action isn’t taken to halt new tar sands pipelines and production growth. Once extracted, much of this oil will be burned, pushing global temperature limits over the brink.

Infographic: Subsidies Propping Up Oil Profits and Polluting the Climate

This infographic compares the economic viability of oil production in discovered but undeveloped U.S. fields with and without subsidies. It shows that at current prices, almost half of all oil production is dependent on federal and state subsidies.

Briefing: Canada Not Running Out of Pipeline Capacity

Canada does not need new pipelines, in spite of repeated misleading claims by the oil industry. That’s the conclusion of a new Oil Change International (OCI) analysis showing that Canada has ample pipeline Capacity to export all existing and under construction oil production to market from western Canada.

Shorting the Climate: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2016

In the past three years, the North American and European commercial and investment banking sector has engaged in fossil fuel financing practices that are deeply at odds with the global climate agreement reached at COP 21 last December.

Briefing: BOEM 5 Year Offshore Drilling Plan and the Climate

The recently released draft five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling is predicated on a failure to act on stated climate policy. To remedy this, the U.S. government should act quickly to implement a climate test in order to evaluate energy decisions on the basis of our national and international climate commitments.

A Convenient Lie: Why Fossil Fuel Supply Matters for the Climate

With Shell in the Arctic, the scale and volume of the blowback from the environmental community has clearly caught the Administration flat footed. When confronted, they usually first mumble something about highest standards (which is completely irrelevant to the climate argument) but if pressed, the Administration and its defenders invoke a sober, scolding tone to explain: 1) We need oil and we will need oil for a long time. While we’re all concerned about climate, we’re still going to need oil and gas in the future and we might as well make as much of it as possible right here at home. 2) U.S. oil production is essentially irrelevant for climate, because “more oil production in one place generally means less oil production elsewhere – that’s how markets and prices work”. Together, these two arguments form what we can think of as the Convenient Lie that we can be serious about fighting climate change and also approve virtually all new fossil fuel infrastructure in the U.S. It’s the Convenient Lie that keeps us from dealing with the Inconvenient Truth.