ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum Corp have joined the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative set up in 2014 by BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras and a number of other oil and gas companies. As part of joining, the three new companies have pledged US$300 million (€259 million) for research  intolow-carbon technologies to add to the Initiative’s existing research funding. The news comes after greater public pressure on oil and gas companies to take climate change action but also in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in a statement that it “will take the collective efforts of many in the energy industry and society to develop scalable, affordable solutions that will be needed to address the risks of climate change”, and noted the risk of climate change to his company’s business prospects. Shortly after the expansion of its membership, the OGCI announced a target to “reduce by 2025 the collective average methane intensity of its aggregated upstream gas and oil operations by one fifth to below 0.25%, with the ambition to achieve 0.20%, corresponding to a reduction by one third.”