Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja with agency report
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of the world’s most developed nations, has said it would cost $50 billion to vaccinate the world.
This sum pales into insignificance when compared to the $10 trillion the group of 20 countries has spent mitigating the economic impact of Covid-19 since it became critical in 2020.
Chief Economist of the OECD, Laurence Boone, said the emergence of a new coronavirus variant increases the uncertainty already weighing on the global economic outlook and highlights vaccination shortcomings.
While the Paris-based organisation didn’t directly account for omicron in its new outlook, published Wednesday, it emphasised continued pandemic risks and urged governments to address low inoculation rates in some regions so as not to create “breeding grounds for deadlier strains.”
“We are concerned that omicron strain is further adding to high levels of uncertainty and risks and that could be a threat to recovery, “Boone said in a presentation of the OECD’s report in Paris.
Vaccinating more people “remains the most important priority for ending the pandemic and also for tackling the imbalances that are plaguing the recovery, “Bloomberg quoted him as saying.
On top of tighter virus restrictions including renewed lockdowns in some parts, OECD members are battling soaring inflation and hold-ups in global supply chains that are starving factories of components.
“When you balance things out, $10 trillion for supporting the economy going through the pandemic compared with a tiny $50 billion to bring the vaccine to the entire world population, that looks completely disproportionate,” she said.
The OECD, a group of high consuming nations of the world’s oil and gas is a major determinant of decisions taken by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Meanwhile, despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, ExxonMobil has broadened goals to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released with each barrel of oil it pumps.
The US energy major said it aimed to reduce company-wide greenhouse gas intensity by 20-30 per cent by 2030. Exxon’s previous target was an intensity reduction of 15-20 per cent by 2025 for its “upstream”, or oil and gas production, business, which it says was achieved this year.
The updated emissions and capital spending plans released on Wednesday are the first since Exxon lost board seats in a proxy battle with the activist hedge fund Engine No 1, which had argued the company was ill prepared for a lower-carbon future.
Carbon intensity is a measure of emissions per unit of output. Activists have criticised Exxon for using this yardstick, rather than absolute emissions, because it allows total emissions to rise if fossil fuel output climbs. However, Exxon said its updated plans would lead to “corporate-wide” emissions 20 per cent lower by 2030.
The Texas-based company intends to spend $15 billion cumulatively on new emissions-reduction efforts to 2027, or about $2.5 billion a year. The company’s total planned capital spending is between $20 billion and $25billion a year to the end of 2027, up from about $16 billion in this year’s pandemic-hit budget.
Chevron, Exxon’s biggest US competitor, said in September it would spend $10 billion on low-carbon ventures up to the end of 2028. Both companies have pledged a much lower share of total spending to cleaner energy than their European rivals.
The planned capital expenditures at Exxon are still far below the $35bn in annual spending the company had planned before the pandemic pushed down world oil demand.
