As world leaders prepare to gather in Belém, Brazil, for the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, new findings reveal a growing gap between global climate commitments and the continued expansion of fossil fuels. A new report from the German environmental rights organization Urgewald shows that oil and gas companies are moving forward with large-scale production plans that threaten to undermine the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
According to the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (GOGEL), 96 percent of fossil fuel firms are exploring and developing new oil and gas resources. Short-term expansion is up 33 percent since 2021, when the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that “no new oil and gas fields have a place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.” Urgewald’s research found that companies are planning to bring 256 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent into production in the coming years.
Five companies account for roughly one-third of this short-term expansion: QatarEnergy with 26.2 billion barrels, Saudi Aramco with 18.0 billion, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) with 13.8 billion, Russia’s Gazprom with 13.4 billion, and the United States-based ExxonMobil with 9.7 billion.
“The largest fossil fuel companies in the world are treating the Paris Agreement like a polite suggestion, not a survival plan,” said Nils Bartsch, head of oil and gas research at Urgewald. “With 256 billion barrels of new projects on the table, this is not a transition—it is defiance.”
The report marks ten years since the signing of the Paris Agreement, the legally binding accord committing 195 nations to develop and implement plans to reduce emissions. But Urgewald’s data indicate that fossil fuel investment continues to accelerate.
On average, companies listed in the Global Oil and Gas Exit List spent $60.3 billion each year over the past three years on oil and gas expansion. That amount represents around seventy-five times more than governments have pledged to the United Nations Loss and Damage Fund, designed to help countries in the Global South mitigate and adapt to climate impacts.
“The Loss and Damage Fund sits almost empty,” said Fiona Hauke, oil and gas researcher and financial regulation expert at Urgewald. “Oil and gas companies are investing more than $60 billion each year into new exploration, exacerbating the problem the fund is meant to alleviate. This is financial and moral negligence. Regulators and supervisory authorities need to start treating this as a risk, not a footnote.”
In the United States, where the federal government has pledged only $17.5 million to the Loss and Damage Fund, two of the country’s largest fossil fuel corporations have spent billions expanding their operations. Chevron invested $1.3 billion on exploration over the past three years, while ExxonMobil spent $1.1 billion during the same period.
The contradiction is also visible in Brazil, where the state-owned oil company Petrobras has begun drilling in the Foz do Amazonas Basin near the Amazon rainforest. The project coincides with Brazil’s role as host of COP30 and has sparked criticism from environmental groups.
“Brazil is showing an alarming level of climate hypocrisy—presenting itself as a climate leader at COP30 while allowing oil and gas expansion right at the summit’s doorstep, threatening one of our most fragile ecosystems,” said Nicole Oliveira, executive director of the Arayara International Institute in Brazil.
Petrobras was named the fifteenth-largest fossil fuel exporter worldwide and is currently spending about $1.1 billion annually searching for new reserves. The drilling in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, one of the world’s most biodiverse and sensitive regions, raises concerns about oil spills and ecosystem disruption near Brazil’s northern coastline.
The United States remains central to the global expansion of fossil fuels, especially in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector. The GOGEL report shows that the U.S. has overtaken China as the number-one developer of gas-fired power under the Trump administration. Venture Global, based in the U.S., is now the world’s largest LNG export developer, with companies planning an export capacity of around 847 million tons per year—a 171 percent increase from current operational capacity.
Even some industry leaders have acknowledged the dangers of this rapid expansion. Urgewald noted that “even TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné recently acknowledged that the LNG sector is ‘building too much.’” The report warns, “Analysts warn that if current plans proceed, the world could face an oversupplied gas market within five years, with far more capacity than global demand can absorb. Yet despite industry leaders acknowledging the risk, investment continues.”
The report also highlights how U.S. fracking companies are producing more gas than domestic markets can handle. “Now faced with a flood of excess gas, companies are racing to build new LNG facilities to liquefy their surplus and push it onto countries around the globe,” the analysis reads.
In Mexico, that expansion is being facilitated through cross-border LNG infrastructure. “They will import fracked gas from the U.S., liquefy it in Mexico and send it straight to Asia. Gas liquefaction is an incredibly dirty business,” said Pablo Montaño, director of Conexiones Climáticas in Mexico.
Environmental groups say these projects prioritize profits over public welfare. “Fossil fuel expansion continues to put communities and the climate at risk,” said Cathy Collentine, Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director at the Sierra Club. “Under the Trump administration, we are seeing a disregard for both to do the bidding of Big Oil and Gas.”
As fossil fuel production surges, health experts warn that climate change is becoming a growing public health emergency. In the lead-up to COP30, more than 230 organizations and individuals signed an open letter titled Put Health at the Heart of Climate Action, calling on world leaders to make health a central focus of climate policy.
“Health is not a secondary benefit of climate policy—it is the foundation of resilience, prosperity, and justice. Yet health remains marginal in most climate negotiations, treated as an outcome rather than a driver,” the letter reads. “At COP30, this must change.”
The letter was signed by health groups such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, environmental organizations like Amazon Watch and Greenpeace UK, and activists including Vanessa Nakate. It urges governments to phase out fossil fuels, fund local climate action, keep polluting industries from influencing policy, integrate health into national climate plans, and include “planetary health education” in schools and medical training.
“The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue. It is a health and human rights emergency,” said Marta Schaaf, director of the Program on Climate, Economic, and Social Justice, and Corporate Accountability for Amnesty International. “Governments need to take decisive action to fully phase out fossil fuels, to save lives, build resilient communities, and uphold people’s right to a healthy environment.”
“Promoting resilient health systems is a central objective of the COP30 Action Agenda,” said Ethel Maciel, COP30 Special Envoy for Health. “Efforts like this open letter are helping build a broad coalition to drive implementation of the Belém Health Action Plan and its shared goals. I am pleased to add my name as the COP30 health envoy and to see a wide range of partners doing the same as we move closer to the 30th Conference of the Parties in Belém. This letter sends an unequivocal message that health is an essential component of climate action.”
Amy Shepherd, chief operating officer of Think-Film Impact Production, one of the organizers of the letter, emphasized the human side of the crisis. “Every signature on this letter represents a shared story of human resilience and hope,” she said. “It is essential that policy leaders champion films like My Planet Now, which translate the urgency of the climate and health crisis into emotion and movement—because only when people feel the story will they fight to change its ending.”
The letter’s release follows the publication of The Lancet’s “Countdown on Health and Climate Change,” which found that climate change caused 84 percent of life-threatening heatwave days between 2020 and 2024, and that heat-related deaths have risen by 63 percent since the 1990s to reach one per minute. The report found that extreme drought affected 61 percent of land area in 2024 and that 639 billion work hours were lost to extreme heat that same year. It concluded that a lack of climate action has led to millions of preventable deaths annually.
Air pollution from burning oil, gas, and coal contributes to 8 million early deaths every year. “These are not abstract numbers but real people—families struggling to breathe, children developing lifelong conditions, health workers pushed to breaking point,” the letter said.
The signatories closed with a warning and a call to responsibility. “At COP30, governments must treat climate change not only as a planetary emergency but as a direct public health crisis and opportunity,” the letter concludes. “By putting health first, leaders can design climate policies that protect lives, reduce inequalities, and rebuild trust in international cooperation. The health of billions—and the future of generations to come—depends on it.”
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