Published June 3, 2025
By Bruna Campos, Senior Campaigner, Offshore Oil and Gas at the Center for International Environmental Law.
World leaders gathering from June 9 to 13 in Nice, France, for the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), have a crucial opportunity — and an urgent imperative — to recognize that the ocean needs to be free from fossil fuels. And CIEL will be there with partners from across the globe demanding that governments take action to phase out oil and gas.
The ocean is suffering from a triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic pollution. The conference’s theme, “accelerating action and mobilizing all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean,” is a rallying call to halt one of the greatest threats to the ocean: fossil fuels. Tackling offshore oil and gas must be at the center of any action to protect the ocean.
As co-hosts of UNOC, France and Costa Rica — both members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) — could rally governments to take action against oil and gas as an essential way to protect our ocean from further harm and destruction.
Why We Need a Fossil-Free Ocean
Offshore oil and gas activities are rapidly expanding within the oil and gas sector. Offshore oil and gas is positioned for its highest growth in a decade. As of early 2025, nearly 29 percent of all oil and gas is being extracted offshore. In 2024, offshore wells alone comprised 85 percent of new global discoveries.
The continued expansion of offshore oil and gas operations poses a significant threat to the ocean and Indigenous Peoples, as well as to the livelihoods of coastal communities. Moreover, it undermines the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment recognized by the United Nations.
Our blue planet will not survive if we don’t make the ocean free of fossil fuels. Offshore oil and gas activity causes myriad harms across its life cycle, including to ocean biodiversity.
How Does Offshore Oil and Gas Impact the Ocean?
Seismic surveys during exploration for offshore oil and gas drilling are not only killing whales and dolphins in large numbers, but are also impacting microorganisms that play a key role in supporting the food web. This exacerbates food insecurity, especially in vulnerable countries.
Where there is oil and gas production, oil spills occur regularly. Researchers have recently documented that slow-leak oil slicks have largely gone undetected. These are everyday oil leaks that are not being documented but disrupt the marine ecosystem. Furthermore, there is a high risk of blowouts, the uncontrolled release of crude oil or gas from a well, leading to fires, explosions, and major environmental damage. The deeper the well, the higher the risk of disasters that can have long-term impacts on the environment and human life.
The transportation of oil and gas across the seas can also be extremely damaging to marine life, especially to corals. With the expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — gas that has been cooled to a liquid state for storage and transportation — there has been a surge in vessel traffic shipping fossil fuels, amplifying the threat to vital ecosystems.
Additionally, abandoned offshore infrastructure, such as oil rigs, platforms, and pipelines that are built at sea to explore, extract, and transport oil and gas, not only leads to more contamination, but also attracts invasive species. For instance, sun corals attach themselves to offshore platforms, facilitating their spread to new areas and harming native marine ecosystems.
These harms to marine and coastal life are only compounded by the climate impacts of offshore oil and gas, which — like all oil and gas — release large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that fuel climate change. Rising emissions are driving sea level rise, ocean acidification, and pollution. And while the ocean has vast potential as a carbon sink, this ability to sequester carbon is being jeopardized by rising emissions.
The Legal Duty to Make the Ocean Fossil-Free
Governments around the world have legal obligations under international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to halt this fossil-fueled marine pollution and the climate impacts imperiling the ocean and all life that depends on it — including coastal communities. For low-lying States, sea level rise is not a future threat but a present crisis, undermining their territorial integrity, sovereignty, and right to exist as independent nations. Climate change threatens self-determination: land is once again being stolen — this time by rising sea levels. In an effort to stop sea level rise, protect the environment, and defend their rights, many of these low-lying States are pushing for global negotiations on a Fossil-Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT) that would ensure a phaseout of fossil fuels.
International courts are weighing in on what States must do to protect the ocean and the climate. The climate advisory opinion (AO) from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the implementing court of the UNCLOS, clarified that GHG emissions constitute pollution of the marine environment, and governments have a duty to take all measures necessary to “prevent, reduce and control” such pollution. As part of their ocean protection obligations, States must, therefore, phase out fossil fuels, the primary source of GHG emissions. The forthcoming advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) may further reinforce existing obligations of States to take ambitious climate action — a critical step toward ensuring a fossil-free ocean.
Ocean Action Panels: Debating the Whale in the Room
The impacts of fossil fuels on climate change and ocean biodiversity are widely documented, and the legal obligations to act are increasingly clear. And yet, multilateral spaces continue to fail to tackle the whale in the room: phasing out fossil fuels, as an essential “ocean-based mitigation action” — UNOC lingo for measures in or on the ocean that mitigate climate change.
Despite its outsized impact on climate change, biodiversity, and marine pollution, offshore oil and gas activities remain largely absent from ocean discussions. The ocean action panels at UNOC3 are a series of panel debates with leading experts that will address the top ten challenges facing the ocean. With regard to offshore oil and gas, the most relevant are Panel 7 “Leveraging ocean, climate and biodiversity interlinkages,” Panel 9 “Promoting the role of sustainable food from the ocean for poverty eradication and food security,” and Panel 10 “Enhancing the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and their resources by implementing international law as reflected in the UNCLOS.” These panels present opportunities to highlight different dimensions of the impact that offshore oil and gas have on the ocean.
The debate under Ocean Action Panel 7, will be a key moment for the UNOC3 to recognize phasing out fossil fuels — particularly offshore activities — as THE ocean-based climate mitigation action needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, the goal set by the United Nations to “conserve and sustainably use the ocean, seas and marine resources” by 2030 and the basis for the UN Ocean Conferences.
Ocean Action Panel 9 on food security will also be an opportunity for a debate on how offshore oil and gas continues to impact the food web, artisanal and small-scale fishers, and the rights of coastal communities. The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, clearly explained the impact of oil and gas on food security in his report on the impact of climate change on fisheries.
Lastly, Ocean Action Panel 10 will dive into the implementation of UNCLOS. This will be an opportunity to debate States’ obligations to take measures to combat climate change, including measures to halt offshore oil and gas activity, as necessary ocean-based climate mitigation actions.
On the Road to Belém: What Climate Action Looks Like
The UN Ocean Conference is not a place for the negotiation of new legally binding agreements. Its success depends on governments making bold new political commitments to effectively implement their existing international obligations, including by confronting the fossil fuel industry. This means taking action to phase out fossil fuels consistent with the Rio Conventions, three international agreements that address climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Ahead of this year’s climate convention in Belém, Brazil (COP30), governments should ensure their latest national climate action plans are “blue,” by adopting moratoria on offshore oil and gas expansion and setting out measures to rapidly and equitably phase out ongoing production. Doing so would make a momentous contribution to the reduction of GHG emissions and the protection of the ocean.
France and Costa Rica’s leadership at this year’s UNOC provides a chance to drive the debate in the right direction. Both of these countries banned offshore oil and gas activities within their own waters and are members of BOGA. They now have the opportunity to bring offshore oil and gas into the spotlight of the Rio Conventions, urging other nations to align their ocean, biodiversity, and climate policies.
UNOC3 is a crucial moment for governments to recognize the impact of fossil fuels on the ocean, as well as on Indigenous Peoples and coastal communities that depend on a healthy ocean. Addressing the threat that oil and gas poses to the ocean is not optional if we are to protect global biodiversity, meet climate targets, and achieve SDG14. The time for a fossil-free ocean is now.
For updates from CIEL’s staff on the ground at UNOC3, follow our social media channels below:
