Gas Fields Alone Now Exceed the Entire 1.5C Carbon Budget

Fossil fuel extraction projects already operating or under construction contain enough oil, gas and coal to release an estimated 897 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, set against a remaining carbon budget of 130 billion tonnes for a 50 per cent chance of holding global warming to 1.5C. That is the central finding of an updated Sky's Limit analysis published by Oil Change International on 29 October 2026, eleven days before COP31 opens in Antalya, Turkiye.

The ratio is close to seven to one. The narrower finding is the harder one to argue with: existing gas fields on their own contain enough fuel to exceed the entire remaining 1.5C budget, without a single additional barrel of oil or tonne of coal.

The oil and gas component is 451 billion tonnes, derived from an estimated 825 billion barrels of oil and 2,784 trillion cubic feet of gas in fields already developed at the start of 2026. Coal mines account for the rest. Oil Change International notes that its oil and gas figure is slightly lower than its previous estimate while the margin of exceedance is significantly higher, which is a statement about the denominator rather than the numerator.

Where the 130 comes from, and why it does the work

The multiple is a fraction and the denominator is carrying most of the argument. A remaining budget of 130 billion tonnes is the figure for a 50 per cent chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, which is to say a coin flip. Ask for better odds and the budget shrinks and the multiple grows. Accept 1.7C and both move the other way. None of that makes the comparison wrong, but it does mean the nearly seven times headline is one point on a curve and not a physical constant.

The analysis also says the existing project base risks driving temperatures as high as 2C, and it leans on two United Nations Environment Programme reports warning that the world is on course to pass 1.5C at least temporarily. Parallax Nexus reported on 27 October that those same reports put the pledges now on the table at a 6 per cent emissions cut by 2035, measured against 2019.

A campaigning organisation making a technical claim

Trout named the United States, Canada and Australia as the countries that have led oil and gas expansion since the Paris Agreement while claiming climate leadership. Oil Change International campaigns for an end to fossil fuel expansion, and the report is timed and framed for the negotiation it addresses. That is worth saying plainly rather than presenting the analysis as neutral arithmetic.

The honest reading is that the framing is advocacy and the underlying point is not seriously contested. That existing fields and mines hold more carbon than the budget allows does not depend on anyone's policy preference; it follows from reserve estimates and a budget figure drawn from the standard literature. The weakness is at the other end. No plausible scenario involves extracting every barrel from every developed field, so 897 billion tonnes is a ceiling on committed emissions rather than a forecast of them, and the analysis does not model the decline rates, prices or write-offs that would determine the real figure.

What Antalya will actually discuss

The agenda is narrower than the ratio implies. Carbon Pulse reported on 29 October that Turkiye's COP31 presidency is asking countries to endorse a common framework for the energy efficiency of buildings, as part of a wider push on electrification. Production phase-out roadmaps of the kind this analysis demands are not the centre of that programme.

That gap is the point of publishing now. Governments at COP31 are meant to turn a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels into national roadmaps, and the supply side of the problem, the fields and mines that already exist, has no formal home in the text. Oil Change International is trying to put it there with a number large enough to be hard to set aside.