The oilers, which together supply nearly 10% of the world’s energy and almost a fifth of all oil and gas production, declared on Friday their collective support for an effective climate change agreement to be reached at COP21.

The 10 CEOs currently make up the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, set up following discussions held during the January 2014 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting and officially launched at the September 2014 UN Climate Summit.

“Our shared ambition is for a 2C future,” the CEOs said. “It is a challenge for the whole of society. We are committed to playing our part.

“Over the coming years we will collectively strengthen our actions and investments to contribute to reducing the greenhouse gas intensity of the global energy mix. Our companies will collaborate in a number of areas, with the aim of going beyond the sum of our individual efforts.”

The ailing Pemex is undergoing a revolution of its own with the government opening up Mexico’s exploration and production to foreign investment, while the Saudi nation is haemorrhaging due to the low oil prices it refuses to support through cut production.

Meanwhile, Reliance, which owns the world’s biggest crude oil refining facility, overtook India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) to become the country’s most profitable company in May when it posted a larger-than-expected 12.5% profit on the back of its strong refining business.

Repsol, for its part, has just announced it’s selling $US7.1 billion worth of non-strategic assets to deal with weak oil prices, with a 38% spending cut between 2016-2020.

Having purchased Calgary-based Talisman Energy in December for $13 billion, the Spanish oiler said last Thursday that with the integration of Talisman, Repsol would extract value from its growth to increase efficiency and resilience as well as take advantage of opportunities that arise in the current energy environment.

The OGCI also launched its collaborative report More energy, lower emissions on Friday, highlighting practical actions they’ve taken to improve GHG emissions management and work towards improving climate change impacts in the longer term.

These actions include significant investments in natural gas, carbon capture and storage and renewable energy, as well as low-GHG research and development.

Together the declaration and report set out key areas where the OGCI companies will focus their collaboration, including:

• Efficiency: optimising efficiency of their own operations; improving the end-use efficiency of their fuels and other products; and working with manufacturers and consumers to improve the efficiency of road vehicles;
• Natural gas: contributing to increasing the share of gas in the global energy mix, ensuring it results in significantly lower lifecycle emissions than other fossil fuels for power generation; eliminating “routine” flaring and reducing methane emissions from their operations;
• Long-term solutions: investing in R&D and innovation to reduce GHG emissions; participating in partnerships to progress carbon capture and storage; contributing to increasing the share of renewables in the global energy mix;
• Energy access: developing projects to provide people with access to energy in partnership with local and national authorities and other stakeholders;
• Partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives: seeking opportunities to accelerate climate change solutions by working collectively or individually in industry and other initiatives.