I'd be remiss if I didn't start off by stating that the most socially conscious gas choice you can make is not to buy it at all, or barring that, to buy less. So try walking/biking more, car-sharing, and getting better gas mileage, for starters.
Nonetheless, most of us will be buying gas at least occasionally, and for many of us, we do it all the time. And gas is a very unique purchase in many ways-- we typically have almost no brand loyalty and often a lot of options. So it's worth exploring what the social and environmental implications are of the brands we choose.
This is going to be a multi-part guide, since there is a ton of information I've found to share, but we'll start with the impact these gas companies have on the environment. There are a lot of information and rankings out there, which I tried to compile for you in one place. (Let me know if you know of more for me to add!) So without further ado:
Specific Environmental Issues/Areas
Corporate Governance and Climate Change rankings from Ceres:
- BP: 90 (out of max 100)
- Royal Dutch Shell: 79
- Statoil: 72
- Total: 62
- Chevron: 57
- Anadarko and Sunoco: 39
- Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil: 35
- Less than 35:
- Marathon (26), Occidental (25), Valero (24), Apache (22), Tesoro(15), Burlington (13), Devon Energy (11), El Paso (9), Murphy Oil (6), Williams (3)
- High performance: BP, Shell, Suncor
- Low performance: Burlington, Marathon, ExxonMobil
- #3: Conoco-Phillips
- #6: Exxon-Mobil
- #22: Tesoro
- #28: Valero
- #55: Sunoco
- #64: Chevron
- #81: Amarada Hess
- #84: Marathon
- Sunoco: +40%
- Chevron: +18%
- Citgo: +17%
- Conoco Phillips: 0
- Total: 0
- BP: -10%
- ExxonMobil: -33%
- Shell: -43%
Overall Environmental Ratings
Innovest's EcoValue21 rating (AAA best, CCC worst):
- Shell: AAA
- BP: AA
- Suncor: AA
- Marathon: B
- Nexen: 7.6
- Petro-Canada: 6.3
- EnCana: 5.4
- Suncor, Shell Canada, Syncrude, Imperial Oil: 5.0
- Talisman: 4.9
- Husky: 4.0
- Canadian Natural Resources: 3.0
- Top of the Barrel
- Sunoco
- BP
- Middle of the Barrel
- Citgo
- Valero ie Corner Store/Shamrock/Ultramar/Stop N Go/Beacon
- Chevron/Texaco
- Shell
- Bottom of the Barrel
- ConocoPhillips ie 76/Conoco/Phillips 66
- ExxonMobil
3 comments:
This is really interesting, thank you! I tend to buy gas from the Safeway closest to me ... have you encountered any info on whose gas supplies store-branded gas stations at Safeway, King Soopers/City Market or Costco?
I buy gas at the costco and it tends to be a little bit cheaper. Nice article though
School Loan Consolidation
"It says: Coming up next... a look at the human rights/workers' rights & safety/etc aspects of these companies, and an attempt to sum up and draw some conclusions. "
but how can i get to that article?
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