Climate Policy Engagement Analysis
Climate Policy Engagement Overview: Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) demonstrates strategic engagement with science-aligned climate policy, comprising both supportive and oppositional positions. Despite the company’s top-line support for climate action, it engages negatively on climate regulations. The company advocates for a continued role for oil in the energy mix, with recent communications emphasizing the role of carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) and direct air capture (DAC) technologies to abate emissions.
Top-line Messaging on Climate Policy: Oxy’s top-line communications are supportive of climate action. In its 2024 Climate Report, published in October 2024, it recognized the scientific consensus on climate change and supported emissions reductions in line with the 2 °C goal, while stating support for pursuing means to limit warming to 1.5 ºC. In this report, Oxy also supported the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Oxy’s messaging on climate policies focuses on the need for incentives for the commercialization of CCUS and DAC technologies for CO2 reduction and removal. For instance, in its 2024 Climate Report, published in October 2024, the company supported policy incentives for CCUS and DAC, and stated that it does not take a “prescriptive view” to policy approaches to climate goals.
Engagement with Climate-Related Regulations: Oxy has broadly negative engagement on climate regulations. As per the October 2024 Climate Report, Oxy's position on a number of policies appears to be contingent on whether these include measures to promote CCUS and DAC, including on carbon tax, cap and trade policies, and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
Oxy is negatively engaged on GHG emissions legislation and standards in the US, particularly relating to methane. In the 2024 CDP Climate Change response, Oxy disclosed its advocacy to weaken Colorado state-level and the US federal methane regulation implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In March 2024, the company’s comments to the EPA advocated to weaken the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) methane fee by recommending “netting” of emissions at the parent company level. The company did not fully support the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule in October 2023 comments to the EPA: while it supported the methane reporting revision, it advocated for a weaker threshold for tracking large emission release events.
Positioning on Energy Transition: Oxy is opposed to a transition away from fossil fuels. Oxy’s recent advocacy on fossil fuels has focused on what the company calls “net-zero oil”. In the 2024 Climate Report, published in October 2024, the company defined this as a process in which oil extraction is complemented with the use of DAC to capture and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. However, Oxy has not specified the need to reduce the role of oil in the energy mix in line with IPCC recommendations. In contrast, the company uses these technologies as justification to use oil until the "day when we run out of oil and gas," as stated by CEO Vicki Hollub in an interview with the New York Times in September 2024. In July 2023, Hollub stated that DAC gives the oil industry a “license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years,” as reported by EE News.
Oxy supports policies that support the development of hydrogen, however, with positions that endorse fossil fuel-heavy pathways. The company’s February 2024 comments to the US Internal Revenue Service advocated to weaken implementation of the IRA's clean hydrogen tax credit by calling for the inclusion of existing fossil fuel generation with CCS to qualify in the credit.
Industry Association Governance: Oxy has disclosed its membership to its industry associations through its corporate website, including a review of alignment on climate change. Oxy retains membership to industry associations that have actively opposed ambitious climate change regulation in the US, including the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce.
A detailed assessment of the company's corporate review on climate policy engagement can be found on InfluenceMap's CA100+ Investor Hub here.
InfluenceMap collects and assesses evidence of corporate climate policy engagement on a weekly basis, depending on the availability of information from each specific data source (for more information, see our methodology). While this analysis flows through to the company’s scores each week, the summary above is updated periodically. This summary was last updated in Q3 2025.