Where are the flows?
There is not enough free, public data on oil and gas supply chains to really scrutinise the fossil fuel industry. This allows oil and gas companies to mark their own homework.
Anyone can now visit a website like Marine Traffic and see an ocean of tiny arrows representing the location of the world’s merchant shipping fleet in near real-time. It’s a marvel of our modern data ecosystem, made possible by the legion of satellites picking up ships’ safety signals so that they can all be delivered to an app on your smartphone in near real-time.
This level of transparency in maritime activity is unprecedented, leading to advances in companies’ ability to manage their supply chains. For traders, it has helped them predict more accurately gluts and shortages of supply and, if their bets are right, make a ton of money.
Unfortunately for the planet, and despite its enormous potential, this data has yet to be used effectively for fighting climate change. One reason for this is that while there is some free, public data on the location of ships, there is almost no openly available information on what they are carrying at the individual cargo level. The International Energy Agency publishes good macro statistics on how oil and gas moves across the world, but it is insufficiently granular to understand some of the key dynamics.
Industry participants have access to this data through commercial providers, but the cost of the subscriptions — usually tens of thousands of dollars per year — puts them out of reach for many policy analysts and journalists. When better-resourced journalists or analysts do secure access to these platforms their use is sometimes curtailed. These platforms' main clients are oil and gas producers and traders who don’t tend to like criticism and may threaten to withdraw their business if they see negative stories citing their data.
Why we need more public data on fossil fuel flows
The primary challenge of the energy transition is for the world to wean itself off of fossil fuels, which currently make up about 80% of global energy consumption. About 60% of oil travels by sea. The shipping sector itself makes up around 3% of global emissions. To address climate change, we need to see the supply chains that feed our energy system clearly.
This isn’t just about the climate; it’s also about energy security. Policymakers should know exactly where shipments of oil and gas are coming from in order to make sure we have sufficiently diverse sources and there’s no single point of failure.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, for instance, the UK government needed to know how much oil and gas it was importing from Russia and what its vulnerabilities were there. We heard stories from NGOs that were being rung up by government agencies asking them where specific cargoes of oil or gas had originated: information you would expect the civil service should readily be able to access. Far from ideal!
Currently, policymakers rely on a patchwork of delayed official statistics and — if they have a sufficient budget — commercial datasets, which creates inefficiencies and lags in its deployment. The Brussels-based think tank Bruegel has been highlighting this gap for some time in its calls for the establishment of a European energy agency, the equivalent of the influential Energy Information Agency in the US.
An imbalance of power
The asymmetry in access to information between industry and policy analysts hands power to the fossil fuel industry and lets them set the terms of public debate and government regulation.
Developers of new LNG export terminals often argue that the new capacity will bring down carbon emissions because they will replace coal, but if the LNG exported ends up heating a British home, then it’s almost certainly not displacing coal. Putting aside the thorny and under-researched issue of whether LNG really is less polluting than coal. The only way for the public to really test the arguments made by vested interests is to actually track where shipments are going and understand in detail the climate impact they are having on the grid that imports them. For that, you need granular data on flows.
The lack of public data also means the oil and gas industry can cover up its underbelly more easily. Groups like SkyTruth which analyse satellite imagery to find oil slicks have identified thousands of previously unreported oil leaks associated from tankers. From our own research with The Washington Post we know that sanctioned Russian oil is laundered through shady ports and ends up in Pentagon supply chains. Our partners SPIT and The Continent used our analysis this year to show how terribly polluting fuels are blended in international waters to avoid the attention of environmental regulators. Our research with the think tank Transport & Environment showed how shipments of environmentally destructive palm oil are still being imported into the oil major Eni’s biorefineries despite the company’s pledge to phase it out.
But these examples are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg built on piecemeal reporting. To really drive transformative accountability in this space and build evidence-based climate policy, we need much more timely and granular monitoring of the key supply chains by groups outside of the industry. We can’t expect oil and gas companies to mark their own homework correctly. The data and tech are there to do this, but too much of it is locked behind paywalls. This is why in the coming months — alongside the likes of Global Energy Monitor and SkyTruth — we hope to start building the foundations of a public infrastructure to really scrutinise oil and gas supply chains.