The CEOs of BP plc, Royal Dutch Shell plc and Mexico’s Petroleos Mexicanos, along with seven other global exploration chiefs, on Friday declared their collective support for the United Nations (UN) to adopt an “effective” climate change agreement.

The companies, which together provide almost 20% of global production and supply almost 10% of the world’s energy, voiced support for next month’s 21st UN Conference of Parties to the UN Framework on Climate Change, also known as COP21.

The CEOs, all members of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), signed the declaration with their peers at UK’s BG Group plc, Italy’s Eni SpA, India’s Reliance Industries Ltd., Spain’s Repsol SA, Saudi Aramco, Norway’s Statoil ASA and France’s Total SA. The OGCI is a CEO-led, voluntary initiative that aims to catalyze practical action on climate change through best practice sharing and collaboration.

The CEOs said they recognize the “general ambition to limit global average temperature rise to 2 C and that the existing trend of the world’s net global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not consistent with this ambition.” Together, the companies have undertaken actions to reduce their GHG footprints, with combined emissions from operations reduced by around 20% over the past decade.

“Our shared ambition is for a 2 degree C future,” the CEOs said in a joint statement. “It is a challenge for the whole of society. We are committed to playing our part. Over the coming years we will collectively strengthen our actions and investments to contribute to reducing the GHG intensity of the global energy mix. Our companies will collaborate in a number of areas, with the aim of going beyond the sum of our individual efforts.”

The OGCI on Friday also issued “More Energy, Lower Emissions,” a report highlighting actions taken to improve GHG emissions management and work toward improving climate change impacts in the longer term. “These actions include significant investments in natural gas, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy, as well as low-GHG research and development,” the members said.

The OGCI companies are collaborating in several areas to combat climate change by, among other things, pushing for the use of more natural gas. In June, the CEOs of BG, BP, Eni, Shell, Statoil and Total also called for an effective price on carbon emissions to push the positives of natural gas (see Daily GPI, June 1).

No U.S.-based producer signed the declaration. However, ExxonMobil Corp. and many other top U.S. producers already use carbon pricing with the expectation that emissions eventually will be regulated (see Daily GPI, Dec. 5, 2013).