A number of the new North Sea players have links to individuals and organisations known to promote misinformation on climate change and lobby against climate action.
Orcadian Energy (formerly Pharis Energy) is a UK-based oil and gas exploration company with interest in four North Sea licences. Steve Brown, Orcadian’s founder, regularly shared posts on social media from his recently-deleted Twitter account that cast doubt on climate policy and modelling, including content from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denying group.
In May 2021, Brown tweeted out an article by Bjørn Lomborg – author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, books that downplay the risks of global warming – about how “exaggerations about climate change” are “destroying our ability to make sensible decisions for the future”. Brown added: “This obsession with climate to the exclusion of many other issues will literally kill millions”.
In other tweets, he said the “climate emergency” was “fake” and claimed the main cause of climate change was solar activity, not greenhouse gas emissions, which he called “benign”.
Although the company has plans to reduce emissions when developing its latest heavy oil field and claims to be “fully committed” to the UK government’s 2050 net zero emissions goal, Orcadian’s company Twitter account also promotes a narrative popular with climate science deniers: that the world’s net-zero commitments will inevitably lead to poverty for millions. Orcardian recently tweeted about the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recent “Net Zero by 2050” report, claiming that “If the world does this it will make energy poverty the prevailing state of being for all but the elites”.
‘Gathering Storm’: How ‘Rogue’ Companies are Buying up North Sea Oil and Gas - DeSmoghttps://www.desmog.com/2021/07/29/gathering-storm-how-rogue-companies-are-buying-up-north-sea-oil-and-gas/