Days after the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, 50 oil and gas companies have made a general commitment to decarbonize their operations by mid-century. This is a start, but nothing like phasing out the actual emissions from burning oil and gas. And even when companies commit to reducing their operational emissions, it's hard to say what that means in practice. They are rarely transparent about their reasons for choosing a particular methodology to calculate emission reductions, or about the underlying data used. 2021 study analyzed publicly available emissions information from 52 oil and gas companies, many of which have made large emissions reduction claims. Simon Dietz of the London School of Economics and Political Science and his colleagues estimated the future emissions intensity of these companies – the rate of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of activity – and compared their trajectories to scenarios that meet the targets of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. They found that the companies they are not setting targets that are ambitious enough, nor are they reducing emissions fast enough to meet the Paris target of limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. (nature.com, editors)