Big Oil breaks with Trump on potential second withdrawal from Paris climate agreement

Big Oil is calling on President-elect Donald Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement after withdrawing from the treaty during his first term.

The Paris Agreement, established at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in 2015, is a legally binding treaty between nearly 195 parties who are committed to international cooperation on climate change.

Trump officially withdrew from the treaty in 2020, but the U.S. was reinstated to the climate agreement in 2021 after President Biden took office.

After winning a second term in the 2024 election, Trump is expected to consider a second withdrawal from the agreement. However, some oil companies have expressed opposition to the idea.

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When Trump first announced plans to withdraw from the climate agreement in 2017, then-CEO of Shell, Ben van Beurden, was opposed to the idea.

"We believe climate change is real," van Beurden told NPR. "We believe that the world needs to go through an energy transition to prevent a very significant rise in global temperatures. And we need to be part of that solution in making it happen."

Ahead of his upcoming second term, Trump is facing renewed calls to consider remaining in the international climate agreement.

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"I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses," Darren Woods, CEO of oil giant ExxonMobil, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "It is extremely inefficient. It creates a lot of uncertainty."

Woods also suggested that it's not good for business "to have the pendulum swing back and forth as administrations change." 

Asked about whether Trump should consider staying in the agreement, the American Petroleum Institute told Fox News Digital they support the treaty's ambitions.

"We have long supported the ambitions of the Paris Agreement, including global action to reduce greenhouse emissions and alleviate poverty around the world," an API spokesperson told Fox. "The U.S. leads the world in producing energy and reducing emissions, and our industry remains focused on accelerating that progress." 

The Trump campaign confirmed to Politico in June that the president-elect would be in favor of once again removing the U.S. from the agreement if elected to a second term.

Fox News Digital reached out to Chevron, TotalEnergies and BP for comment but did not hear back by press time.