July 2025 | Carbon Minefields Oil and Gas Exploration Monitor

The Brazilian government awarded 34 oil and gas blocks in June. All new licences, representing an area of more than 28,000 km2, were in offshore ultra-deepwater areas, except for one onshore block. More than half of these new licences were awarded in the Foz do Amazonas, or mouth of the Amazon River, an area of rich biodiversity. Brazil’s Congress has approved a sweeping rollback of environmental licensing rules, weakening long-standing safeguards that regulate the oil and gas industry. Coming just weeks after the contentious approval of Block 59 in the mouth of the Amazon—following years of legal and environmental scrutiny—the new bill significantly lowers the threshold for approving oil and gas exploration and production projects nationwide.

This latest licensing round was part of Brazil’s plans to boost its oil and gas production by more than 20% by 2030 and become the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. The reserves in the Foz de Amazonas basin attracted interest from major international oil companies, such as ExxonMobil, which partnered with Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras (which owns about 50% of all new fields in Brazil), as well as Chevron and China’s CNPC, which together acquired most of the blocks offered in this sensitive area. Technological advances have significantly reduced the operating costs of extracting oil from these deep-sea deposits. However, environmental and Indigenous groups are challenging Amazon oil development in court, adding risk and potentially increasing costs for developers. Analysis by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, World Benchmarking Alliance, and WWF-Brazil found more than half of Brazil’s planned expansion would not pay off in a world that held global warming to 1.5°C.

Globally, in the first 6 months of this year, nearly 450,000 km2 in acreage were awarded to the oil and gas industry for exploration. This marks a 5-year high for acreage awarded in the first half of the year and a jump of 54% compared to the same period in 2024. This push comes despite the agreement at the United Nations’ 28th Climate Change Conference (COP 28) climate talks in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Monthly Updates

New Exploration Licences Awarded

Last month, governments across five countries granted 55 new oil and gas exploration licences, locking in reserves whose eventual combustion would unleash roughly 382.4 MtCO2. Brazil topped this wave of approvals, greenlighting fields with an estimated 494.3 million barrels of oil and 419.1 billion cubic feet of gas, amounting to 234.1 MtCO2 if burned—nearly two thirds of the global total for the month.  

Oil and Gas Companies’ Exploration Activities

Last month, Chevron, Shell, and Petrobras acquired the largest number of exploration licences—mostly in Brazil and Egypt—loading up reserves whose full combustion would emit roughly 600 MtCO₂. Globally, exploration capital expenditures (CapEx) for new awards reached USD 4,353.6 million, with these three companies investing USD 1,781.8 million combined. Such massive investments risk locking in fossil fuel assets, seriously undermining efforts to keep warming below critical thresholds. The disconnect between global climate goals and rising fossil fuel investments underscores the urgent need for policy reforms that align capital flows with a clean energy transition. 

Rolling Annual Update

Licences Awarded

In the past 12 months, governments awarded 786 oil and gas exploration licences, collectively locking in 2,452.6 MtCO2 of potential emissions if the reserves are burned. The single largest monthly tranche came in August 2024, when the United States awarded a flurry of blocks with total embodied emissions of 439.2 MtCO2. Overall, nations with both limited capacity to phase out fossil fuels and relatively low domestic dependence on oil and gas revenues issued licences with almost half of the total embodied emissions volume. Of these countries, India—looking to alleviate its dependence on oil and gas imports—issued licences with the highest emissions, while Brazil, whose exploration fields have the second most embodied emissions in the group, is seeking to boost its exports. 

Note: The embodied carbon emissions from newly awarded licences are presented based on four country groups based on the Civil Society Equity Review (2023) categorization. Countries are grouped based on two main axes: 1) their capacity to transition and 2) their dependence on fossil fuels, which provides a rationale to determine how fast they should phase out their domestic production.  These indicators are measured based on countries’ ability to deal with the costs and disruptions of climate change and historical emissions, as well as an assessment of how much a country’s socio-economic welfare is dependent on extraction. 

Exploration CapEx

Over the past year, newly awarded oil and gas exploration blocks attracted USD 24.7 billion in CapEx, averaging USD 2.1 billion per month, with June 2025 seeing the highest influx of funds. Major players such as Shell, Petrobras, and Eni jointly poured USD 5.1 billion into newly awarded projects. These investments are directly misaligned with the goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels, as stated at COP 28, and exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Outlook

Ongoing and Upcoming Licensing Rounds 

Despite the dire warnings of climate scientists, governments are planning to proceed with 56 oil and gas exploration licences now open for bidding or under evaluation. If fully developed, these permits could release 8,635.5 MtCO2. Meanwhile, 422 blocks are slated for licensing rounds over the next 6 months, with exploitation of their reserves potentially generating an estimated 9,289.1 MtCO2 globally. Of these planned blocks, China stakes the highest climate risk: its share embodies up to 1,789.8 MtCO2. Such aggressive licensing underscores the persistent disconnect between policy ambitions and the urgent need to limit planetary warming. 

About the Carbon Minefields Newsletter

This newsletter provides monthly updates on oil and gas expansion globally, reporting on every new oil and gas exploration licence awarded. It also tracks the climate impact of these licences, translating them into total embodied emissions—that is, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere if the licenced oil and gas is extracted and burned. Finally, the monitoring of companies’ spending to explore and develop new oil and gas fields provides additional insights into the industry’s expansion activities. Certain data are segmented according to countries’ capacity to transition away from oil and gas. 

Halting new fossil fuel projects is a key step in limiting global warming to 1.5°C and transitioning away from fossil fuels, as agreed by 198 countries at the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28). Research by Green et al. (2024) in Science shows there is more than enough oil and gas in existing fields to meet Paris-aligned energy demand. Accordingly, the Carbon Minefields newsletter monitors efforts to expand oil and gas production beyond already operating fields—flagging misalignment with the Paris Agreement target. 

The data above are collected by experts at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD); we use AI and programming tools to extract and analyze data from Rystad Energy (2025) before reviewing all content for accuracy and clarity.

This newsletter is produced using data from Rystad Energy (2025) extracted from the UCubeExploration Browser v. 2025-07-01 and published with Rystad’s permission. Embodied emission estimates were calculated by the authors using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission factors of crude oil, condensate, natural gas liquids, and gas. Data manipulation is automated with Python programming. Most text is generated with OpenAI's application programming interface using GPT-4o mini. The AI-generated outputs for this edition were produced on July 16, 2025. International Institute for Sustainable Development experts review all AI-generated content for accuracy, clarity, and further interpretation. 

For more information regarding the data presented and for national-level disaggregation, please contact us at [email protected] or [email protected].